


Grotesquerie

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Series: Volutions [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Adventure, Humor, Multi, UST, kmeme, volutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 53,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Xenon says don't touch, Do Not Touch. After an accident in the Black Emporium leaves Anders and Fenris chained together like thieves, they must find a way out of their situation. They must go farther than they ever expected - all the way into Anders' past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Anders shook his right wrist, looking for all the world like a cat that had just stepped into a puddle and was shaking away the horrible wet.

“Hawke says ‘It will be fun, Anders. Don’t worry about it, Anders. We just need to drop in on Xenon, Anders. Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you we needed to bring Fenris, Anders. Just wait over there while I buy this, Anders. _Why did you touch it, Anders?’”_

“Shut. Up.”

Anders closed his mouth with a snap and glared at the man on the other end of the chain that hung between his right wrist and Fenris' left. Admittedly, Fenris looked no happier about the situation, but that really didn’t mitigate the utter _clusterfuck_ his day had turned into.

  


• • •

  


  
Every day that the lantern was lit outside Anders’ clinic was a busy day. He had tended to one case of pirate-borne disease, a toddler with a cough that his mother said had persisted for months, and a case of advanced old age that no magic under the sun could treat. He had given out ointment for the first, a syrup made with embrium for the second, and two hours of listening to tales of Kirkwall as it used to be for the third.

Hawke arrived just as he was showing old Mother Hawley to the door with a promise that yes, he would drop by for tea some afternoon, but no, give her lovely, _marriageable_ granddaughter his regrets that he would be unable to attend her Autumn Equinox gathering.

His pleasant smile for Mother Hawley turned into a scowl for the man she passed as she carefully navigated the stairs outside his clinic. Hawke pinched out the lantern flame at the head of the stairs.

“What is it this time?” Anders asked, turning away to retrieve his staff and load his belt pouches. “Slavers? Bandits? Tell me it isn’t spiders, I’m really not in the mood for spiders.”

Without waiting for Hawke’s latest tale of adventure and imminent bloodshed, Anders prepared himself for mayhem and violence. At least after the false chokedamp incident of the past summer, he had managed to clean the vomit stains and lingering smell out of his coat. With Winter just around the corner, the last thing Anders wanted to do was face the cold with only a Tevinter mage robe to turn to.

Hawke lounged in the door frame, watching Anders gather his supplies, and Anders didn’t have to look to see his self-satisfied smirk. Void take the man, but all he had to do was show up, and Anders dropped everything to help him, no questions asked. Well, a few questions asked, but he would still go, regardless of the answers.

“We’re going up to the Bone Pit,” Hawke drawled. “So it could be any of that. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun!”

“The Bone Pit,” Anders said with a sigh. “Then add dragons to the list, because you can’t tell me that all those dragonlings we fought up there just laid their own eggs.”

“Good point,” Hawke agreed. “Which is why we’ll be making a stop by the Black Emporium before we go.”

Anders groaned and raked the tie out of his hair with his fingers. He caught up all the strands that had escaped while he worked and tied his hair back up again without benefit of a mirror, going more for function than form. “If Urchin is giving Xenon one of his baths, I’m leaving. I’ve seen broodmothers, darkspawn, and more demons than I care to count, but I do _not_ need to see Xenon naked ever again.”

Hawke waved that away. “Big bad Gray Warden can’t stand to see a man who looks like beef jerky getting a sponge bath?”

Anders flipped him a hand gesture that did not mean he was ordering two beers.

“I’m ready.”

“Good.” Hawke straightened the daggers at his back and clapped Anders on the shoulder as he locked the clinic door. “It’s good to have you along.”

Anders dropped the scowl and smiled over at him. For all his swagger and bad jokes, he couldn’t help but like the man. “Damn right it is.”

However, when he saw Isabela and Fenris lounging at the entrance to the Black Emporium, he considered rethinking his liking for Garrett Hawke.

He grabbed him by the arm before they reached the waiting pair and hissed, “You didn’t tell me that Fenris was coming.”

“So?” Hawke shrugged off Anders’ hand and tilted his head quizzically. “You still would have come.”

“That’s not the point!” Anders insisted. “I just need time to prepare myself to deal with Ser Pricklypants. You don’t want to clean up bits of fireballed elf.”

“I thought you two were getting along better since last Summer,” Hawke said and started striding down the catwalk to join Fenris and Isabela. “Do I need to lock you two in a room and make you talk it out?”

“No!” Anders yelped and hurried along after him. “I’ve had quite enough of close quarters with him.”

Yes, he – and his “stamina” – could easily go the rest of his life without being stuck in close quarters with Fenris ever again. He and Fenris had given their friends rough outlines of what had happened under Darktown during the heat wave, but neither of them was at all inclined to share some of the particulars about what had happened while they were trapped in the sarcophagus together.

As though Isabela needed any more fodder for her ridiculous friend fiction.

“And if by getting along better, you mean it’s like the difference between a combustion grenade and a fell grenade, yes. It’s not as explosive—” he dropped his voice as they approached Fenris and Isabela, “—but it still blows up.”

He nodded to Fenris and let Isabela bump her shoulder against his as they followed Hawke into Xenon’s realm.

“Look at you,” she greeted, “I think you shaved sometime this week. Got a new girlfriend? A new boyfriend?”

“Not bloody likely.” Anders elbowed her lightly. “Just because you and Hawke are doing the bump and grind doesn’t mean all of us are.”

“It would help your mood. I know you have needs. I’ve seen them up close, remember?” She grinned and tilted her head to watch Hawke’s ass. “Just find someone other than Hawke. I sort of like him.”

Anders rolled his eyes and hung back, eying Urchin and Thaddeus as they moved into the light that filtered into the Black Emporium, the undercity’s finest, and only magic and curiosities shop. At least Xenon wasn’t currently having a bath.

Xenon’s voice wavered out of the air above them. “Ohhhh… customers. I haaaaave a fresh shipment of weapons and some loooooovely grotesqueries, but I aaaaaaask you not to touch the glass displays. _Do not touch them!”_

While Hawke made a beeline to the crafting items, Isabela drifted over to look herself over in the Mirror of Transformation, leaning in to pull at the skin by her eyes, checking for crow’s feet. Anders imagined that she would be looking rather refreshed when they left the Emporium.

He gave Fenris a sidelong look and went to examine one of the new glass cases. He noted that Fenris went the opposite direction to do the same thing. The first case held trinkets, baubles, and a ceramic baby doll that followed Anders’ every movement not just with its eyes, but with its whole head, turning it to watch him.

“Grotesque is right,” he muttered to himself and moved on to the next case before the baby doll lunged through the glass at him because his eyes were prettier.

The next case held seashells with little crabs that waved huge bejeweled claws at him, a tiny silverite castle model with animated figures moving behind the windows, and a small pile of iridescent feathers that actually made him rub his fingers together against the sudden urge he felt to take them out and hold them against his pauldron to see how they would fit with the feathers already there.

Too tempting. He moved on to the center, longest case, ignoring Fenris who came up on his right, having already examined the other two cases on his side.

In pride of place in this case was the most beautiful staff he had ever seen, chased in lyrium, topped by… a kitten? From the instant he saw it, he wanted to touch it, his thoughts already cataloging his every possession to determine what he could sell to acquire it as his very own.

Beside him he heard Fenris murmur, “That sword….”

Xenon’s droned warning was far too slow as both Anders and Fenris touched the glass.

“Do not touch the glaaaaaass!”

 _Click._

For such a small sound, it seemed to echo throughout the shop.

“What?” Both Fenris and Anders said simultaneously.

“Thaddeus! _Thaddeus!”_

The golem was lurching toward them and Anders had mental images of splattered mage, all over the glass display.

“Wait!” he cried. “Wait! Xenon! I’ll wipe the fingerprints off. No harm done!”

He tried to grab for the kerchief he wore around his neck to wipe the glass, but found his right hand jerked back as it met some resistance.

And that was when Anders realized that he was well and truly fucked, and not in the fun way.

Locked around his right wrist was a gleaming cuff covered in faintly glowing runes. All by itself, that might be bad, but not necessarily tragic, but of course that wasn’t all – attached to a link integrated into the cuff was a chain about two feet long that attached to an identical cuff on Fenris’ wrist.

“Xenon!” It was Hawke. “Call off Thaddeus. Whatever it was, we’ll make it right. You know I’m a good customer. I’ve spent plenty of coin here.”

Hawke moved up to the dais in front of the shopkeeper. “Xenon, call off the golem.”

“Please!” Anders shouted, trying to back away from Thaddeus while Fenris realized that it was near impossible to wield a broadsword with a mage attached to his wrist.

He jerked on the chain and sent Anders stumbling forward on the other end of it. “Ow! Watch it you bastard!”

“Thaddeus,” Xenon called once again. “Back to your place.”

Isabela sauntered over, replacing her daggers on her back, and Anders was faintly pleased to realize she had been prepared to fight for them even here. She smirked at Anders and Fenris, remarking, “Just how I like my men – in chains.”

Fenris snarled, and Isabela had the grace to look abashed. “You know what I mean, don’t go getting all feral on me.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, some men have no sense of humor.”

She held out a hand while she pulled her lock picks out of her belt with the other hand. “Here, let me see those.”

“Yes, please, and thank you,” Anders said, holding his wrist out to her. “Two minutes of this is too long.”

“That—” Xenon began.

“Hm,” Isabela mused, twisting the cuff, her smile fading away.

“—won’t—”

“Anders,” she murmured in a tone that he did not like one bit.

“—work,” Xenon finished.

“There’s no lock mechanism on this,” she said, looking up at him with a frown.

“Xenon, my friend, good man, Kirkwall’s finest merchant,” Hawke said, putting on a winning smile. “You know that they didn’t mean any harm. What say you let my friends out of their chains and then I’ll finish my purchases.”

“I cannot,” Xenon replied.

“Oh come _on,”_ Anders protested. “It was a mistake. I really will clean off the fingerprints.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Hawke asked. “Just have Urchin fetch the keys or whatever and we’ll just move on.”

“I cannot,” Xenon repeated. “There is no key.”

“No key?” Fenris asked.

“Nooooooo,” Xenon said. “The security spell was not designed with a release mechanism.”

“What do you do with people who get caught by it, then?” Isabela asked, though she was still examining the cuff.

“I have Thaddeus… take care of them and drop the remains in the seeeeeewers,” Xenon replied. “And then Urchin cleans up the blood.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know what you two wanted with that set of daggers anyway,” Isabela was saying as Hawke’s little crew of misfits walked through Lowtown. “I mean they were gorgeous, but what use would either of you have for them?”

“Exactly,” Hawke agreed. “If it weren’t for the fuss you two raised, I would have asked Xenon for a better look. Those ironwood handles looked like they were made for my hand, and the serrations behind the trailing point? Perfect for maximum damage.”

“What serrations?” Isabela asked. “And what ironwood? Those daggers were obviously aurum through and through, and the swage was _sexy.”_

Anders and Fenris exchanged a look, for once in agreement. “There were no daggers,” they said in unison and shot each other matched glares that silently said, _Don’t agree with me._

After more bickering, everyone could agree that they had all seen something different in the case.

“A kitten on the top? Really?” Isabela gibed. “What are you, a schoolgirl?”

Fenris snorted. If nothing else, he was adequately assured that Anders was not hiding any secrets about his gender.

“I like cats,” Anders said defensively. “What should it have been? A naked woman? Who do I look like? You?”

Fenris attempted to fold his arms across his chest, which resulted in Anders stumbling into him with a curse.

“Stop it!”

There was no chance that Fenris was going to apologize to Anders, but he dropped his arms again.

They were getting a few more stares than usual until Isabela stopped them.

“One moment, unless you really do want all of Lowtown gossiping about how you two are playing sex games in public.”

“If you have any ideas,” Fenris said.

“Maker, no,” Anders said.

“That’s what I thought.” She moved in to press against Anders’ chest, her arms going around his neck while Fenris watched him go rigid with surprise.

“How is this supposed to help?” Anders asked, his voice strained. He put his hands behind his back as though afraid that having them anywhere near Isabela would result in spontaneous itching.

“Tch,” she clicked her tongue at him and stepped back, pulling his kerchief out from under his coat. “I was just untying this. You need to lighten up, you used to be so much more fun.”

She wrapped the chain with the kerchief and examined her work. “At least now it doesn’t look like you two just escaped from prison.”

Fenris wasn’t altogether certain what it looked like, but he supposed it was at least an improvement over the dangling chain between them.

“Of course,” she went on. “If you two would just hold hands, no one would really look twice because they would be distracted by the pretty and by the thought of what you two do together behind closed doors.” She grinned. “Or maybe in sordid back alleys. Oh, I have to write that down!”

“No you do not,” Fenris growled.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hawke interjected. “I think it would be very popular.”

 _“No!”_ Fenris and Anders said together.

“Have it your way,” Isabela said in that tone that meant she was going to have it her way anyway.

“Let us simply not speak until we find the smith,” Fenris said between gritted teeth.

It had to be the mage of all people. He had known Hawke and his companions for years and had never found himself forced to be near them by circumstance, but the one man of the group whose company he could not abide was the one he had been locked in a sarcophagus with and now chained to. It made him almost hope that it was true that the Maker had abandoned them, because otherwise it seemed that He had a truly capricious and unfunny sense of humor.

Isabela made a face and went to wrap her arm around Hawke’s waist, leaning in to say something only he could hear. Whatever it was, it made Hawke laugh, leading Fenris to assume it was at their expense.

“She probably said we should just get drunk and have sex,” Anders muttered. “That’s her answer to most things.”

“Which is no reason for you to say it for her,” Fenris snapped.

“I was just—” Anders threw up his hands in exasperation, jerking on the chain. “Forget it. Sorry. I was just saying that was what she was saying. It definitely wasn’t what I was thinking. What I was thinking was ‘let’s get these things off and then I don’t want to see the elf for at least three years.’”

“Ten,” Fenris said.

“Ten,” Anders agreed. “Done deal.”

  


• • •

  


  
“What’s the metal?” Smith the smith asked when presented with the problem. “And can I keep it when I get them off?”

“Keep it,” Fenris said. “I don’t want it.”

“We don’t know what the metal is,” Hawke said. “It’s the kind that appears out of thin air.”

“Hmpf,” Smith muttered, tapping the chain with a fingernail before motioning them to follow him. “I don’t know about the bracelets. Might break your bones chiseling them off or at least cut you up bad.”

“We’ll get by,” Anders said, not mentioning that he would just heal them as soon as no one was looking. “Just get them off.”

“Let’s start with the chain.” Smith motioned for them to follow him to his forge.

What followed was an exercise in breaking chisels, hammers, and ultimately, in denting the smith’s anvil without making a mark on the chain.

Anders gave a heartfelt, _“Shit!”_ which Fenris silently echoed as all five of them regarded the pristine metal.

“You owe me for those tools,” Smith informed them.

  


• • •

  


  
“No shit?” Varric drawled, hefting part of the chain in his hand. “Broke Smith’s anvil?”

“Dented it,” Hawke said. “Cost a fair bit of coin just to have him tell us he couldn’t do anything about it.”

Fenris shifted from foot to foot and pulled lightly on the chain. “Do you have any ideas? Perhaps a dwarven smith would have better results.”

“Maybe,” Varric said thoughtfully. “Maybe not. I’ll see who I can get to have a look at it, but it seems to me this is more mage territory than dwarven. We’re not big on magicking metal out of thin air. What about you, Blondie, no big ideas?”

“If I had any don’t you think I’d have tried them by now?” Anders snapped.

“Touchy, touchy,” Varric said mildly. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to get pissy with the guy who’s trying to help you?”

Anders pulled a face. “Sorry.”

“No problem. Why don’t you two sit down while I see about sending out a few messages.” Varric pointed a stubby finger at Anders. “I’m sending in some wine. Drink it. I don’t want to hear anything from Justice about it, it’s medicinal.”

“I c—”

“Drink it,” Varric, Isabela, and Hawke chorused.

“Drink it,” Fenris agreed. “But if I hear a word about mage rights from you, I shall consider simply cutting your hand off to free myself.

“Oh!” Isabela said. “Like a wolf gnawing its leg off to get out of a trap?”

“After a fashion,” Fenris agreed, pointedly meeting Anders’ eyes to ensure the mage saw he meant every word of it.

“Bastard,” Anders grumbled and dropped into one of Varric’s low chairs, pulling on the chain to force Fenris to either do the same or loom over him like a bodyguard.

Fenris sat.

Isabela’s face lit with an idea. She squealed with delight and leaned in to whisper something in Hawke’s ear.

He grinned the kind of grin that made Fenris immediately suspicious. “You’re brilliant,” he said and patted her backside before leaving the room, and from what Fenris could see, the tavern altogether.

Isabela stared shamelessly at Hawke’s back until he was out of sight, murmuring appreciatively, “That ass…” Then she opened one of Varric’s cabinets to pull out a deck of cards. “Diamondback anyone?”

  


• • •

  


  
Fenris was down half a sovereign by the time Varric returned with a dwarven woman in tow and two wine bottles stood empty on the table with a third already half gone.

“This is Lista. Lista, these are the gentlemen I was telling you about. Fenris,” he nodded to Fenris. “And Anders.” Adding when Isabela cleared her throat, “And Isabela, but don’t mistake her for a gentleman.”

Isabela raised her wine glass to Lista in a toast. “Too right. Now let’s see the cards, boys.”

Anders tossed his cards face down on the table. “Just pickpocket my money and steal from me honestly already. What do Kirkwall’s poor need with bandages and herbs?”

Fenris laid out his cards and turned away to look Lista over while Isabela chortled gleefully as she took the pot.

She was tall for a dwarf, but proportionally broad, dark skinned with dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. She had a large leather case slung over her shoulder with a strap. Unusually for most dwarves Fenris had met other than Varric, she also had a broad smile.

“Let’s see the magic metal,” she said, grinning. “I’m always up for a challenge, but you two are so pretty I should have asked Varric for a different fee.”

“Lista,” Varric said, although his warning tone failed considering he was clearly trying not to laugh. “Much to the disappointment of many of the Rose’s patrons, neither of them is for rent.”

“Disappointed patron right here,” Isabela agreed while she shuffled the cards. “Do you play diamondback, Lista?”

“Not with women who put the best cards in their tits I don’t,” Lista retorted while she ambled over to the table to pick up the chain that hung between Fenris and Anders.

“Oh, I never put them in my tits,” Isabela said with a grin. “Everyone is always staring at them.”

“Too right,” Anders agreed before putting his free hand over his mouth. “I didn’t say that. It’s the wine talking.”

“Yes you did,” Isabela crowed. “I knew you were looking. Don’t you just want to do that electricity thing again?”

“No!” snapped Fenris while Lista snickered under her breath.

“I warned you,” Varric said while he poured himself a glass of wine. “Did I not warn you, Lista?”

“You did,” Lista agreed, still smirking while she opened the case she had brought along and started setting out vials on the table.

“Okay, boys, I need you to hold still. If you shake this thing around I might end up burning a hole in Varric’s table and then he’ll never invite me to any of the good parties again.”

“I would always invite you, Lista,” Varric said, putting a hand over his heart. “I would say you were my favorite girl if Bianca wouldn’t get jealous.”

“You say that to all the girls,” Lista said while she dipped a glass pipette in one of the vials and let a drop of some clear liquid fall onto one of the chain links. “Does he say it to you, Isabela?”

“All the time,” Isabela agreed. “But I found a way to get back at him.”

“Oh?” Lista tsked when she didn’t see the result she was looking for and dripped a different liquid over the first before wiping it away with a piece of wool. “Share.”

“Don’t flirt with Varric,” Isabela gave Varric a sly glance. “Flirt with Bianca. He gets all flustered, it’s the cutest thing.”

“Cute?” Varric asked, putting a hand over his heart. “Cute? You wound me Isabela. Whatever happened to Paragon of Manliness?”

Lista snorted while she repeated her drip and observe process with the contents of a different vial. “Paragon of Manliness? Really? Varric Tethras, it’s a good thing you’re a surfacer because your swelled head would never fit in a proper thaig.”

Anders looked over Lista’s head at Fenris. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re redundant?”

“No,” Fenris said, although truthfully, the answer was _yes._

“Boys,” Lista said, even as she wiped the links dry again, “this isn’t looking good so far, but I’m not done yet.”

“What is it that you are doing?” Fenris asked.

“I’m testing the metal,” Lista said. “If it had been silverite, the first vial would have turned it orange. If it had been orichalcum, the second one would have made it smoke, and so on. All metals have something they react to, and once you know what it is, you know how to work it. So far I’m not having much luck.”

“Here they are!”

Hawke’s voice turned their attention away from Lista to where he stood in the door to Varric’s suite. Now Fenris saw what errand Isabela had sent him off on – behind him he could see Sebastian and Aveline, and peeking under his arm, Merrill.

 _“Venhedis!”_

 _“Shit!”_

Amazing how the two men in two languages could manage exactly the same tone.


	3. Chapter 3

Anders decided that getting drunk probably was the right response to the situation, Justice or no Justice. Come to think of it, in some ways there really was no justice to this situation.

Justice failed to find the humor in that thought, but Anders also decided that was Justice's problem for the night, not his. Which of course ignored the fact that Justice's problems were his problems and vice-versa.

"Why," he asked Hawke in the careful tones of a man trying not to shout, "are _they_ here?"

Hawke, looking as shameless as always, moved aside to let the others into the room. "Merrill is here for a magical second opinion and Aveline is a guard. She knows a thing or two about shackles."

"And Sebastian?" Anders asked, still not shouting, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Oh, Sebastian?" Hawke said as though he'd just remembered the man. "He's just here because this is so bloody funny."

Isabela burst into laughter, which Anders expected, but Lista also chuckled, although she was still apparently focused on dripping various things on the chain.

"I'm going to kill him," Anders said through clenched teeth.

"Not if I kill him first," Fenris growled.

"Grow a sense of humor," Hawke advised. "Because you're going to be hearing about this for years."

Varric poured the rest of the wine into Anders' and Fenris' glasses. "Drink up before either of you gets glowy."

"I've had enough," Anders said stubbornly.

"I say drink it," Lista advised. "Because it looks like I'll be here a while."

Aveline and Merrill both came to get a closer look at the cuffs and chain while Sebastian hung back at the door with Hawke, grinning at Anders and Fenris. He said something to Hawke that made the man laugh and call Isabela over.

"Did you two really get shackled together in the Black Emporium," Aveline asked, leaning over to examine the cuff on Fenris' wrist.

While Fenris explained the incident that led up to their being chained together, Merrill circled around to see Anders' cuff. She ended up climbing up onto the table to examine it, since the corner where the men were sitting was getting crowded. She stretched out on the tabletop on her stomach and scooted close to get a good look.

"Ooh, can I touch it? What does it feel like?"

"No, you may not touch it," Anders said, noting from this corner of his eye that Fenris was watching her with a fierce glower. "And it feels like a shackle. After all my run-ins with templars, I'm a bit of a connoisseur."

"But Hawke brought me here to look at it," Merrill protested.

"You're looking. Lista is testing, and Aveline and Fenris are glowering. That's enough."

She sighed and reached out to hover her fingers over the metal. Anders could feel the faint touch of her magic and pushed her hand away. "I said no!"

"I wasn't touching it!" she said reproachfully.

"Touching it with magic counts," Anders snapped. "Just look at the runes if you have to be here, but keep your fingers and your magic to yourself."

"Drink your wine, Blondie," Varric advised. "Before I have Aveline hold you down and we pour it down your throat."

"You want to leave me attached to a drunk abom—" Fenris began, then stopped, realizing that Lista was still there. "Abominable whiner," he finished.

Anders was terribly tempted to just pour the wine on Fenris, but some old impulse from the man he had once been rose to the surface. "I'll drink when you drink. As much as you drink and I'll drink you under the table."

Justice clamored in his head. Bad idea. Terrible idea. Foolish and self-indulgent and—

And Void take it, he was chained to Fenris and no work for the cause of mage rights was going to get done until he was _un_ chained.

He picked up his glass and gave Fenris a hard stare. "Unless the big bad warrior thinks he can't outdrink a skinny mage."

"This calls for strip diamondback," Isabela called.

Fenris and Anders both said, "No," and drained their glasses. Apparently it was one word they could both agree on.

• • •

Two bottles of wine later, Lista pronounced the metal beyond her experience.

"Sorry boys, you've got a real mystery on your hands. Even starmetal reacts to this one." She tapped the last bottle she had taken out of its own heavily padded case. She had used it carefully, directing Anders and Fenris to move as far away from each other as possible while she dripped a tiny drop of liquid onto the chain. When it had done nothing but sit there, she had washed it down with another liquid that had released a vapor that reminded Anders far too much of the reek of spider guts.

"What is it?" Anders asked.

"Family secret. We dwarves have a lot of them."

"Ain't that the truth," Varric agreed mournfully. "She won't even tell me her full name."

"And I'm not going to," she said as she packed away all the bottles she had pulled out. "Trust me, it's better as a secret."

She patted Anders and Fenris on the shoulder when she finished and hefted her case. "If you get the cuffs off, I'll buy them from you. Varric knows how to get hold of me. Until then, he owes me for my time and supplies."

"You know I'm good for it," Varric said as he came around the table to escort her to the door.

"And you know I'll have your nuts in a box if you don't pay me by the next Merchant's Guild meeting," she said sweetly.

"Bring her by more often," Isabela said.

"I think I like her," Aveline agreed.

Varric grimaced and made a gesture as though to protect the anatomy in question. "Ancestors save me from castrating women."

While he escorted her out to the tavern's front door, Anders came to an extremely unfortunate wine-related realization: "I have to piss."

"I did not need to know that," Fenris said.

Anders rubbed his forehead. "Yes you did, because you have to come along unless you want me pissing on your toes."

They soon discovered that it was rather awkward making use of the Hanged Man's privies with someone unavoidably two feet away at most. Especially when it came to simply getting his trousers open and down enough to take care of business.

"We have got to get these cuffs off," he muttered while Fenris kept his back discreetly turned.

"Would you care to inform me of another obvious fact?" Fenris asked. "Perhaps I have forgotten I am an elf, for instance?"

Isabela was sprawled across Hawke's lap when they returned. "Was it good for you?" she asked, leering.

"Shut up and give me the wine."

• • •

He woke in the morning sprawled under Varric's conference table with a full bladder, a foul taste in his mouth, vague recollections of telling stories of his various escapes from the Circle Tower, and a sleeping elf using his left arm as a pillow.

 _Shit._

He tried to ease his arm out from under Fenris' head without waking him. It wasn't so much out of consideration as out of a wish not to have Fenris tear his heart out in his sleep. That would just be the capper for a morning that was already shaping up badly.

Fenris snapped his eyes open as soon as Anders moved.

"No fisting thing," Anders said quickly. "I just wanted to move before you started cuddling."

"There will be no cuddling," Fenris almost growled.

"Obviously not," Anders retorted. "But there will be a trip to the privy, a glass of something other than water, and who knows, I might vomit. How about you?"

"I am not some fainting flower," Fenris said and this time he did growl.

Anders snorted. "You passed out before I did."

"I did not."

"You did. I remember. Merrill and I talked about—" He cut that off right there. They had talked about whether Fenris ever got tired of wearing that armor and how either of them was going to get out of his clothes to get cleaned up while wearing a manacle strung between them.

The conversation had drunkenly wandered into naked territory and he was not about to tell Fenris about that. "—halla," he finished lamely.

"That will teach you not to drink with a Gray Warden." Anders managed a tired smirk. "Our stamina is multi-faceted."

Fenris snorted, but he crawled out from under the table with Anders, although when he stretched his arms over his head to work the kinks out of his back after a night on the floor, Anders was unwillingly brought along for the ride.

There was a blanket-covered lump on the bed that Anders assumed was Varric, while Merrill was curled up, fully dressed at the foot of the bed. Anders blearily remembered that she had drunk more wine than she was accustomed to as well. Aveline had probably returned to the barracks, and if Anders knew Hawke, he was in Isabela's room down the hall.

As for Sebastian, Anders thought he remembered the man eventually excusing himself when he was the only sober person in the room. Coincidentally around the time Isabela suggested they play "I never."

Anders spotted a piece of paper stuck to the spikes of Fenris' gardbrace and plucked it off. The first thing to catch his eyes was a limerick:

 _There once was a mage from the Anderfels  
Who practiced his lubrication spells  
The magical hanky panky  
Makes the glowy elf less cranky  
Because Anders summons slippery gels_

He recognized the handwriting. "Isabela."

The page also had some crude drawings of him and Fenris doing… He set the page on fire with a thought and dropped it on the table to finish burning. See if he treated her the next time she started itching.

"What was that?" Fenris asked.

"Friend fiction," Anders said, because it was easier than describing the drawings.

The two words were enough. "Isabela."

Anders nodded. "Exactly."

When they returned from the privy, Varric was still asleep but Merrill was awake and looking cheerier than anyone had any right to be on a hungover morning.

"Good morning!" she called, earning glares from both Anders and Fenris before they sat. "Oh, sorry, I forgot. I'll be quieter."

She settled into a chair on the opposite side of the table from the pair. "Are you still going to do it?"

"Do what?" Anders asked.

Merrill pulled her feet off the floor and tucked them under herself. "Go see Bethany. We talked about it, remember? After you let me finally get a proper look at the manacles? You do remember, don't you?"

His skin crawled to think of Merrill actually touching him and the manacles. For all that he was _technically_ an abomination, he still could not abide even the idea of blood magic. What he had done was helping a friend. What she did was consorting with demons.

"Just tell me again."

"We were talking about the cuffs and you let me test them with my magic. I couldn't do anything and we were talking about other mages who might know more. Hawke came by and said that maybe Bethany would know someone in the Circle and you and Fenris said that would be fine. Do you remember that?"

She leaned toward them. "Did you drink too much last night?"

"Yes, Merrill," Anders said with a sigh. "I drank too much last night. We all drank too much last night."

"I didn't," she said cheerily. "And neither did Sebastian. I don't know why he didn't stay for the game. I never have to drink. Well, almost never. It really wasn't fair for you to say 'I've never made a deal with a demon.'"

"Do we have to start that fight again," Varric said wearily, still completely covered in blankets. "Because it gave me a headache last night; this morning it might make me have Bianca finish the fight."


	4. Chapter 4

Fenris found the Gallows troubling in the best of times. The Tevinter-style architecture, the statues of tormented slaves, the general atmosphere of oppression all served to remind him of things he would rather forget.

There was also the fact that while he bore mages in general no great love, including the one he was chained to, he had grown to respect Hawke's sister, Bethany. If ever a mage was worthy of freedom, it was she. To know that she was imprisoned here did his mood no good, nor did the fact that Hawke and his friends had been denied their request to meet with her.

He was not overly enthused by the camouflage Hawke had come up with for the manacle chain either. He and Anders each held the handle of a bag that hung between them filled with Hawke's torn trousers collection. The manacle chain hung down into the bag, concealed by the ratty trousers that Hawke always picked up, insisting that they were still worth a coin or two.

"I'm sorry, Hawke," Cullen said, and Fenris believed the templar truly was sorry. "Bethany is still considered too dangerous to have contact with outsiders. Technically both you and she could be sanctioned for even asking."

"But we need some help," Hawke insisted. "Can't we talk to her for just a few minutes. Even just a note?"

Cullen looked pained, but shook his head. "No. It's out of my hands. She's an apostate, but even if she weren't, she's too new to the Circle to be allowed outside contact. It's for her own good, trust me."

Anders cleared his throat and Fenris jerked on the bag handle he held, earning a glare from Anders.

"Don't make this worse," Fenris hissed in warning.

Anders pulled a face at him before turning his attention back to Cullen. "Maybe one of the Formari? Even a—" He said it as though the words had be dragged from his throat, "—Tranquil who knows about metallurgy?"

Cullen considered the request before nodding. "I think I can allow you to meet with Padraic, but I will oversee the meeting."

Hawke grinned, but Fenris thought he still saw disappointment in his eyes. He had been hoping that this would be enough to finally see his sister for the first time since returning from the Deep Roads, and his hopes had been for nothing.

Nonetheless, he clapped Cullen on the armored shoulder and grinned that irrepressible grin of his. "You're a man among templars," he proclaimed. "We'll owe you a favor."

Anders grunted something under his breath, but Fenris was spared from clouting him over the head by Aveline, who interrupted anything Anders would have said. "We'll wait in the side courtyard."

She planted her hand in the small of Anders' back and gave him a push in the right direction, keeping her voice low as they left Hawke to accompany Cullen while he fetched this Padraic he had mentioned. "So help me, Anders," she growled, "if you turn this into a pissing match about mages versus templars, I will stuff your mouth so full of those trousers that you won't even be able to hum the Fereldan anthem."

Fenris felt his lips curve into the slightest of smirks. "Why wait?"

"You shut up too," Aveline snapped. "Don't goad him. If you think I want to get into a fight with every templar in Kirkwall because you two couldn't stop yourselves from touching things you shouldn't, think again."

"Someone's in high dudgeon," Anders said, perhaps aiming for a joking tone but only sounding peevish, "and she isn't even in chains."

Aveline's fair face flushed red, making her freckles disappear. She poked a finger in Anders' chest and leaned close. "No, she's the one who just saw Hawke have his hopes of seeing his sister dashed on the floor."

She poked him again, and Anders winced. Fenris thought he should be glad it was just her finger and not her sword.

"So when Hawke comes back, you should think about _thanking_ him for remembering your problem when he has problems of his own."

Anders dropped his eyes and slumped. "You're right."

"What was that?" Aveline pushed with her finger in the center of Anders' chest. "I want to hear that again."

"You're right," Anders snapped, looking up and scowling. "I won't make trouble for Hawke here today, but if you don't get that finger out of my chest, I'm going to give it frostbite."

Maker forbid and mark the moment, but Fenris stepped in before Aveline decked Anders. "This will lead to fighting just as surely as his remarks about templars. Let us leave this for the ferry back to Kirkwall, then I will hold him for you."

Aveline growled and poked Anders one last time to make her point before she turned her back on him and stalked away to watch for Hawke and Cullen's return.

"Have you always made a habit of antagonizing everyone who might want to help you?" Fenris asked Anders while the mage rubbed the sore spot where Aveline's fingertip had doubtless left bruises.

"Only on special days where I have to ask _templars_ for help," Anders snapped. "Because I live for ways to be able to say 'yes, ser, thank you, ser, and while you're at it, ser, may we exploit Tranquil mages, ser?'"

After that all three of them subsided into brooding silence until Hawke and Cullen finally returned with a man so large, he actually made Qunari look a bit on the puny side. He had blond hair that hung past his shoulders in matted skeins too regular to be from simple neglect and wore a close-cropped beard that rose high on his cheekbones to hide much of his face. He towered over both Hawke and Cullen and lumbered with a gait that reminded Fenris of a bear standing on its hind legs.

Fenris' first thought was that they had found some half-ogre to try to simply snap the chain with his bare hands, but poking over the huge man's shoulder, he spotted a staff so proportionally large that he might has well have simply uprooted a small tree and strapped it on his back.

This was the mage Cullen was going to let them speak with because _Bethany_ was too dangerous?

"Maker's breath," Anders murmured. "What do they feed him? Whole cows?"

"I'll wait here," Cullen said, stopping far enough away to give them some semblance of privacy as long as they kept their voices low. "Just don't make me regret this."

"Would we do that?" Hawke asked cheerfully before adding, "Don't answer that."

Hawke led the giant over to his friends. "Padraic, this is Aveline, Captain of the Kirkwall guard, and these are my friends Anders and Fenris."

Anders tipped his head back to take Padraic's full measure and whistled before he remembered his manners. "Thanks for coming to talk to us, we had a bit of a cock-up and need some help."

"So I hear," Padraic rumbled, his voice sounding exactly as deep as Fenris had expected from such a large man. "Not that Serah Hawke explained why you needed someone expert on magical metals."

Hawke murmured something to Aveline to which she nodded, leaving them to engage Cullen in conversation.

Fenris noted that Hawke moved to put his body between Cullen's line of sight and the bag. "Show him," he told Anders and Fenris when Aveline had Cullen suitably diverted.

Together he and Anders put the bag of trousers down and pulled the chain out for Padraic to see.

"Ah," Padraic rumbled. "Now I see."

He reached out to take the chain in his hands and for the first time, Fenris saw why Cullen might think Padraic was not as dangerous as Bethany Hawke.

Padraic's hands were covered in burn scars so severe that the fingers on his right hand were clenched against his palm in a permanent fist; his left hand was marred by scars that ran in scarlet rivulets up into the sleeve of his robe. He might still be strong, but he clearly had lost the dexterity needed for any spellcraft but the most rudimentary.

He lifted the chain in his damaged hands and Fenris felt the lyrium in his skin react to a faint flow of magic from the mage. He gritted his teeth and struggled to keep the power from flaring through the markings.

Anders glanced his way and then to Hawke, communicating something that had Hawke suddenly gripping Fenris' bicep to draw his attention. If he had meant to help Fenris, he failed rather miserably.

Fenris nearly growled, his markings flaring so bright that Padraic dropped the chain and made a sound of surprise.

"Sweet Andraste," he breathed, and Fenris was surprised to hear reverence in his tone. "How do you live with all that lyrium?"

"How did your hands get scarred?" Fenris retorted, shaking off Hawke's grip and sucking in a deep breath to get enough control to push the burning power back into the lyrium.

"Forge accident," Padraic answered matter-of-factly. "I'm lucky I have hands at all." His eyes flicked over to Anders, then widened.

Anders was swaying on his feet, faint blue light leaking out of his half-closed eyelids. On his face was an expression of dazed bliss Fenris had never thought – or wanted – to see there.

Hawke cursed and glanced over his shoulder, shifting to ensure that Cullen couldn't see Anders.

Fenris did the only thing he could think to do other than, well, rip Anders' heart out. He had a feeling that would go over poorly. He pinched his arm, hard.

Anders blinked, so Fenris pinched him again.

Padraic watched the byplay with his brows drawn down in a glower. "What are you?"

Anders licked his lips and rubbed his sore arm. "I'm in need of a change of smalls is what I am," he mumbled before realizing what he had said.

If Fenris had thought Aveline's face had gone red earlier, Anders' face blazed so brightly that he half-expected his nose to start bleeding from all the blood rushing to his head.

Everyone dropped their eyes to Anders crotch. He came out of his daze enough to notice and spat a curse at them all, pulling his coat tight to try to hide from their looks.

"Not helping," he growled. "Back to the part where we get these Maker-forsaken cuffs off and I can go drown myself in the harbor in embarrassment. _Now!"_

Padraic shook his head, still frowning. "What was that?"

Hawke came to their rescue. "I've never seen that before. It must have something to do with the cuffs. Is there anything you can do to get them off? Not that seeing Anders have a spontaneous—"

 _"Hawke!"_

Hawke grinned at Anders and shrugged. "Besides that, we'd owe you if you could help them. Maker help us if they're chained together too long. I can't keep them drunk forever."

Padraic looked dubious, but reached for the chain again. This time Fenris braced himself for the touch of magic that conducted through the metal, feeding into the lyrium marks at his wrist and from there into the rest of his body. He shuddered with the effort of keeping the marks quiescent.

Eventually Padraic released the chain and went to one knee to examine the cuffs themselves without actually touching either Anders or Fenris.

Fenris shifted restlessly from foot to foot while Padraic asked them to move their arms one way or another to give him a full view of the cuffs and all their markings. He kept darting looks at Anders, wondering why Anders had been so affected today when Merrill had apparently touched the cuffs with her magic the night before while they were drunk.

What if it wasn't the magic?

He remembered Anders' almost throwaway comment of months ago when they had fought together under Darktown: _You don't even want to know what all that lyrium does to my head…_

Padraic rose to his feet to tower over them again and shook his head. "Nothing I've seen, but I know where to look. Those runes look familiar, but we're talking old, old magic here. Even if I find anything, the best I can do is give you information."

He looked down at his twisted hands. "The magic's out of my reach."

Hawke shook his head. "Anything you can do is better than where we are right now." He produced an envelope seemingly out of thin air and tucked it inside Padraic's sleeve. "And if you could just see that Bethany Hawke gets that, I'd be even more in your debt."

Padraic shifted, and it was like mountain ranges suddenly moving. "You never stop with just one thing, do you?"

Hawke spread his hands out and looked utterly unrepentant. "If I did, I'd still be in Lowtown."

• • •

Fenris dragged a very reluctant Anders away from the others on the ferry ride back to Kirkwall.

"It was the lyrium, wasn't it?" he demanded, keeping his voice low.

"I wasn't expecting it," Anders said defensively. "It certainly wasn't intentional."

"That means yes."

Anders shrugged and leaned against the rail to watch the water passing below. "Probably," he admitted. "It's not something I like to advertise, but Justice has a bit of a… thing for lyrium."

"A thing?"

Anders's eyes went partially unfocused, as though he listened to something that Fenris could not hear. When he spoke, it sounded more like quoting than his own words: "I had a ring, a gift from a friend. I kept it as a reminder that _'even in misfortune, good can be found.'_ Perhaps we should all remember that lesson."


	5. Chapter 5

The rest of the ferry ride back to Kirkwall passed in uncomfortable silence. Anders was caught between flaming embarrassment and anger. Anger was certainly the easier of the two emotions to live with. He could be angry at the templars, at the Gallows, at the system, even at Cullen who claimed to care, but still wouldn't allow Hawke the simple relief of contact with his own sister.

Because being embarrassed meant he had to consider other things, like the possibility that the reaction from his "warden stamina" back during the Summer had been as much Justice's doing as his own neglected libido's.

Maker, but the flare of Fenris' lyrium conducted through the manacle had made both Anders and Justice react in ways that were still drying in his smallclothes.

 _Not_ a pleasant sensation.

Neither was having Justice speak with his lips. He had expected it when he had opened himself to Justice, offered himself as his host, but that did not make it any less unsettling when the spirit took the reins.

He kept his eyes on Kirkwall Harbor's gray water, losing himself in occasional whitecaps and the whorls raised in the ferry's wake. He has never been a normal man, but he was thrice over not normal – a mage, a Gray Warden, an abomination.

And apparently a man who would cream his drawers like a teenager at a touch of lyrium under the right circumstances.

When the ferry reached the dock, he and Fenris followed Hawke and Aveline off the ferry. At first the dock swayed under his feet the way the ferry had, but he knew that would pass in a few minutes.

"I have to return to the Viscount's Keep," Aveline said when they came together as a group again. "You know that I'll be there for you if you need me, Hawke."

She unslung the sheathed longsword from her back and held it out to Fenris. "I know it isn't your favored weapon, but you don't have two hands free. Take mine. I have another in my office."

Reluctantly Fenris took her longsword and let her help unbuckle his greatsword to put the smaller weapon in its place.

"I'll take care of it, you have my word," she promised before nodding to Hawke and striding away with Fenris' sword tipped against her shoulder, heading for Hightown and Viscount's Keep.

"You could come home with me," Hawke offered.

"No," Anders said before Fenris could agree or decline. "There are still people who need me. We'll go back to the clinic."

"And if I do not wish to?" Fenris asked.

"Then I'll ask what you have to do that is more useful than healing the sick," Anders snapped. "Go back to your mansion to plunder the wine cellar? Read Isabela's 'romantic novels' at Hawke's house? Perhaps you and I can go skipping hand in hand up Sundermount?"

To Hawke he said, "We'll be at my clinic."

• • •

Mother Hawley was waiting for him when he arrived, sitting patiently on the stairs under the unlit lantern with one of her horde of grandchildren restlessly drawing crude anti-guard slogans in the dirt behind her.

"I knew you would come today," she said, easing herself up off the step with a groan as old bones protested the movement. "Our Lydia's baby is doing poorly. I told her that I would send you to see her, but—" she tapped the cuff on Anders' wrist with her cane, her eyes following the links of chain that dropped into the bag he and Fenris still carried between them, "—looks like you found yourself a spot of trouble."

Anders suppressed a groan, but at the same time he couldn't help laughing. The old woman had spotted something that all the Gallows' templars had been oblivious to. Small wonder Hawke could have all his shenanigans right under their noses.

From there the day was as busy as it always was when he had been away for even half a day. Fenris was a constant, grim presence at his side that made at least one coterie thug walk in, see the healer's companion, and turn to leave without having his problem seen to.

However, when Anders made him remove his gauntlets and hold Mother Hawley's grandson while Anders examined him, Fenris showed an unexpectedly gentle side. He held the child as though afraid it would break, or perhaps, Anders thought, as though he was afraid that he would be the one to break it.

He was also helpful when three fishermen carried in a fourth man slung between them on a makeshift stretcher, explaining that he had slipped when a hard wake from another ship had rocked their fishing boat, sending him tumbling to have his leg crushed between the hull and dock.

Fenris had helped to restrain the man while Anders did the excruciating work of pulling the man's crushed leg straight and moving shattered bone back into place before sending waves of healing magic into his leg, mending the breaks, healing the internal damage to muscles, veins, and arteries alike, and finally, with the last of his energy, repairing the fractured mess that had once been his knee.

He swayed on his feet but caught himself on the edge of the cot before pronouncing the fisherman well enough to get back to his boat.

They left with their thanks and promises that Anders would have a share of their next catch. Anders saw Fenris try to conceal his distaste for fish when they said that, but Anders thanked them before settling onto the cot to catch his breath and rest his face in his hands.

"Do you always push yourself like this?" Fenris asked, taking a seat next to him. "Or only when there are witnesses?"

"There are always witnesses," Anders said wearily. "There's never an end to the people in Kirkwall who need help."

He drew a deep breath and pushed himself up off the cot before he got comfortable and gave in to the urge to sleep off the fatigue that came with extensive healing.

"I need to get cleaned up, and I can use your help, too," he said reluctantly, in part because he hated asking for Fenris for any help and in part because he was certain Fenris wasn't going to like the favor he asked.

"What kind of help?" Fenris asked suspiciously.

Anders rolled his eyes. "Obviously I need your assistance in killing a score of innocents then stripping me naked to do an unholy dance in the moonlight."

He sighed in irritation. "I just want to get cleaned up, and if I'm going to be chained to you for any length of time, I need your help getting out of this coat so I can change to something easier to work with. I'll even help you if you need it."

There was the small matter of what Anders intended to change into, but that didn't need to be addressed quite yet.

• • •

"No!"

Fenris glared at him as though he had asked him to strip naked and do a spicy shimmy in front of every slaver in Kirkwall.

"I just need your help cutting along the seam here," Anders said with as much patience as he could summon. He held a thin-bladed knife that would cut the seam along the sleeve of his coat without damaging it irreparably. Dammit, he liked that coat.

"Not if you are going to put _that_ on." Fenris pointed an accusatory finger at the bed where Anders' Tevinter mage robe was laid out for him to change into.

"For the last time," Anders said. "it's something I can take on and off whether there's a chain there or not. I'm being practical, you should try it. It isn't like I'll suddenly turn into a magister just because of my clothes. If clothes really made the man, I'd have turned into a bunny about fifteen years ago."

That was enough of a non sequiter to derail Fenris from the rant he was preparing about the robes, and Anders took the opportunity to press on. "Unless you're just afraid to see me take my clothes off. I'd understand of course. I am rather irresistible."

He forced enough of a smirk that he could see Fenris' fingers flex as though considering simply tearing his throat out.

On the bright side, if Fenris went glowy, he would probably die with a smile on his face and a stain in his trousers.

"Give me the knife."

Anders handed over the knife and said a silent prayer that Fenris wouldn't put it to bloodier use.

He winced at the sound of cloth and leather parting under the sharp blade, but Fenris cut the coat's seam cleanly from wrist to shoulder and from shoulder to collar. It was hardly an ideal solution, but it let Anders strip out of his coat and set it aside while Fenris repeated the process with his shirt.

He couldn't sew worth a damn, but there were patients who came to the clinic who would be happy to trade healing for some sewing work.

"You're still wearing _that,"_ Fenris said with unconcealed hostility when Anders finished wriggling out of his coat and shirt, leaving the Tevinter Chantry amulet hanging in the open on his chest.

"And it's still a gift from Hawke," Anders retorted while he turned his back on Fenris for some modicum of privacy while he slid off his trousers, leaving him in the fresh smalls he'd changed into as soon as they had gotten into the clinic.

The chain jingled and tugged while he stripped down and stepped into the robe. Mostly Fenris seemed to tolerate the tugging, but occasionally he jerked back on the chain when Anders pulled too hard.

"Imagine if we went up to the Bone Pit with Hawke like this," Anders muttered when Fenris pulled too hard one time too many. "Excuse me Ser Spider, could you please not eat my face while the pissy elf and I negotiate who gets to use the arm this time?"

"Hawke will not let that happen."

"Probably not," Anders conceded. "He has other mad souls who will follow him into that pit of disaster and despair."

He got the robe settled, fastening the collar and settling the pauldrons on his shoulders. "One more thing."

'What?"

"Do up my laces?"

• • •

Fenris was even surlier for the rest of the day. Apparently the sight of the Tevinter-style robe was enough to make him seethe. Anders made a half-hearted attempt to see things Fenris' way – what if Fenris put on templar armor?

It didn't work. Apparently he couldn't get his head far enough up his own arse to see things Fenris' way.

He pushed himself on with his work, seeing everyone who came to the clinic until late into the evening when Fenris declared the clinic closed.

"Even slaves must sleep, and you are no slave," Fenris insisted as he dragged him by the chain to extinguish the lantern outside the clinic. "And I am no slave. You will eat and we will rest. With luck, tomorrow Hawke will bring us news."


	6. Interlude

His bed was too narrow for two people. It was barely wide enough for one person, but the niggling voice of Justice in the back of his head usually drove him to the point of exhaustion anyway, at which point how narrow his bed was simply didn't matter.

Tonight it mattered with Fenris' back pressed right against his back. Back to back was the only way to sleep comfortably that didn't involve one of them spooning tightly against the other. He had already had his groin pressed against Fenris' backside too many times in his life, and he was in no hurry to repeat the experience, nor to reverse the positions.

 _A lie._

Anders grimaced to himself. It wasn't a lie exactly. It wasn't _Fenris_ he lusted after. What he lusted after was more a concept than a person – an end to sleeping alone, an end to having no company but a being who had never been human and would never understand being human, an end to having only his own hand to sate himself when wanting raised its head.

He had thought that when he offered himself to Justice as a host that he would never fear being alone again, but instead…

…instead he was lonelier than ever, and the man he had once been was occasionally terrified of what he had become.

But if there was anything he could do, it was push away fear. He had seen too many things, done too many things in his life to let fear rule him. He would be dead a hundred times over otherwise.

He closed his eyes and pretended, just for a little while, that the man pressed against his back did not hate him. He summoned up memories of other times, other places, other warm bodies, and felt a smile finally touch his lips.

Oh, but he had been a heartbreaker, and it had been so much fun. The clutch of soft hands, rough hands, a woman's lips, a man's beard, taking, being taken. The simple pleasures of the flesh, the simple satiation of desire, the rapturous drowning in sleep after bliss to wake in the morning for another game of _Don't mind my breath and what was your name again?_

With a warm body against his back, he could almost feel, just for a little while, like the old Anders.

The old Anders also reacted to the presence of an attractive man in his bed. He was only semi-hard. He could probably let exhaustion claim him and it would subside, but he crept his free hand down to his groin despite his better instincts.

He lay still, listening to Fenris' steady, slow breathing, feeling his body move with the rise and fall of his chest. When he was convinced that Fenris was truly asleep, he carefully worked his robe up until he could slip his hand under his smallclothes to wrap around his cock, coaxing it easily from semi-hard to fully hard with a few light strokes.

He struggled to keep his motions minimal, almost timed with his breathing, and was encouraged when Fenris did not react.

Behind his closed eyelids, he browsed through images of past lovers, of suntanned limbs and full lips, full breasts, narrow hips, and the delicate swirl of tattoos over lithe muscle and…

 _Wait._ Back that up.

He lost his stealthy rhythm when he realized that a mental image of Fenris had snuck its way into his harmless fantasies.

He wondered, was it better to wank and think of someone else in the same bed with Fenris, or wank and think of Fenris while in the same bed with him?

At this point he was hard enough that the thought of simply not wanking was no longer an option.

 _Maybe I should just ask Fenris to_ glow _at me._

He shunted thought of that embarrassing little side effect of the chain aside and resumed his stealth masturbation. He barely moved his fingers to stroke himself, playing his thumb over the head of his cock, rubbing the sensitive space where his foreskin bunched when it was retracted, stroking the first fluid that leaked out over the head.

It wasn't as satisfying as a full on, no holds barred, fucking-his-fist wank, but there was something to be said for simply not being alone when he did it.

When the pleasure finally built to the point where it spilled out on his hand, he caught his breath and squeezed his eyes tightly closed, holding himself quivering lightly until he finally relaxed with a heavy sigh.

He was just working his hand out of his smalls to wipe it on the sheet when he felt Fenris shift away from him, pulling on the chain strung between them while he reached for something.

Then a rag landed on Anders' face.

 _Awkward._

Neither of them said a word while he wiped his hand before they both finally subsided into true sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Fenris considered again that simply cutting off the mage's hand would be the most expedient answer to this problem. He could live the rest of his life with the cuff and chain if he had to. It could be a "fashion statement," to borrow one of Isabela's phrases.

His musing was prompted by the fact that he and Anders were attempting to work out how the two of them could fight – someone other than each other – while still chained together.

"Don't jerk on the chain," Anders groused. "I can't finish my spell if you yank on my arm like that."

"And I cannot fend off a blade if I cannot move," Fenris snarled. "Or claws that might rip your tender mage flesh. Or teeth that might, for a blessing from the Maker, take off your nattering _head!"_

Their practice was, as might be expected, going poorly.

When they woke that morning, stiff and cramped and far too close to one another on Anders' narrow bed, they had silently shared the only easy agreement of the day – _last night never happened._ Anders had heated some tasteless paste he had the audacity to call porridge and shared his meager food with Fenris before insisting that he had more to do around the clinic.

This was a Gray Warden, a powerful mage, and an even more powerful abomination? Spending time in close quarters with the man, it was difficult for Fenris to reconcile his notions of mages and abominations with what he witnessed in Anders.

However, with the man bitching at him from the other end of two feet of chain, he was not finding his feelings about Anders softening much at all.

At Fenris' insistence, they had left the "healer is in" lantern unlit and moved to the open space outside the clinic doors to practice fighting together.

Fenris hated the light little toy sword that Aveline considered a suitable weapon. It lacked reach, allowing enemies too close. He toyed with the idea of using Anders the way she used a shield, but he would become a liability once he was dead and still attached to Fenris' wrist.

"If I hit a man with the pommel of my sword—" he demonstrated on a support beam, "—can you take advantage of it?"

Anders considered how he worked with Aveline and nodded. "Two options, depending upon what we're fighting, how many, and how close the quarters. Either an energy cage that tightens like a fist or lightning."

He moved his hands through the motions of the first spell for Fenris to feel how it would affect him through the chain, then demonstrated the movements of the second.

"Good." Fenris pushed aside a surge of conflicted emotions at the realization that he was working out dual fighting tactics with a mage. This was his choice, not some kind of slavery. Or if it was, he and Anders were slaves together. "Then we will practice that until it flows."

They practiced until they were both sweating and gasping for breath, but Fenris pushed himself even harder until Anders finally gave in.

"Enough!" Anders let his staff fall from his hand to the floor with a light clatter and leaned over his knees, gasping for breath. "Haven't you heard of moderation?"

"Haven't you heard of the best defense being a good offense?" Fenris retorted. He was sweating almost as hard as Anders, but he stood straight and strong out of pure bloody-mindedness to show the mage who was the stronger of the two.

Anders waved that away while he drew two more deep breaths before he picked up his staff and stood up again. "If you're going to be like that, let's try a few other things. Remember when we fought together last Summer?" He raised a hand that suddenly steamed as frost gathered around his fingers. "I freeze them, you break them."

Exploiting frozen enemies – even imaginary ones – was harder with a longsword. Fenris had to adjust his tactics, finally settling on a cleaving sweep that seemed most likely to break through ice and frozen flesh alike.

"Again," he demanded when Anders went through the motions of casting the spell and jerked too hard on the chain.

"Again," Anders snapped when Fenris moved too quickly and disrupted his spellcasting.

"Again," Hawke interjected when they moved through the motions of ice spell and cleaving sweep perfectly. "That was better than watching a Rivaini dance troupe."

Fenris and Anders snapped their heads around in unison, sword and staff raising together before they both subsided. Hawke was standing at the top of the stairs lounging insouciantly against the railing with his lips turned up in a smirk.

"I'm going to burn your hair off if you do that again," Anders snapped before remembering himself. "Do you have any news?"

Hawke raised an eyebrow. "I don't know if I should give it to you if you're just going to threaten me." He pulled a thick envelope out from behind his back and wiggled it teasingly.

"Hawke," Fenris growled and held out his hand.

Hawke made no move to hand over the envelope and looked pointedly at Anders.

Anders sighed heavily and said, "You know I didn't mean it Hawke. Now can we have the envelope, pretty please with a qunari on top?"

Hawke slapped the envelope into Fenris' outstretched hand and took out a smaller envelope of his own. He held it like something precious. "Padraic got me a note from Bethany too. I think Cullen knew it and looked the other way."

Fenris passed the envelope to Anders and ignored him while he tore open the top and drew out a sheaf of papers. "Is she well?"

"Well enough," Hawke said, turning the letter from his sister over in his hands before tucking it away under his jerkin. "She's used to more freedom, but she's making the best of things. She copied everything down for Padraic since he can't write."

Fenris noted when Hawke's smile slipped. "Her letter says you two aren't going to be happy with the news."

"Makers balls, I'm not," Anders agreed while he skimmed the pages Hawke had delivered.

Glancing over, Fenris saw occasional sketches and a page covered in runes similar to the ones on their cuffs, but his reading lessons were still too remedial for him to even begin to make head or tails of the content.

"What is it?"

"Time for the Hanged Man," Anders said, scowling at the pages. "I need mental lubrication." He leveled a finger at Hawke without looking away from what he was reading. "Not _one_ word."

"About how you need lubrication?" Hawke asked innocently. "I wouldn't dream of it, but maybe you could ask Fenris to glow at you."

"I hate you."

• • •

Ensconced in Varric's suite with a pitcher of the tavern's best swill, Fenris watched Anders scribble on a sheet of paper he had cadged from their host. Hawke sat at the far end of the table with his feet propped up, reading the letter from his sister with a faint wistful expression on his usually cheerful features.

Varric held court with business associates as though he often had a mad mage working in his suite, which was perhaps not too far from the truth. Fenris knew that Varric got along with all of Hawke's friends as well as Hawke himself did, sometimes better. He was willing to admit to that it really was difficult to dislike the dwarf.

"What's the news, sweet thing?" Isabela asked, strolling into the room to drape herself over the back of Hawke's chair.

"Letter from Bethany," Hawke said, tipping his head back to smile up at her. "She's doing well. She asks if you've put on pants yet."

"Never." Isabela slid into his lap and plucked the letter out of his hand only to have Hawke snatch it back.

"Family business," he told her before tucking it out of her sight.

"Fine. And what about them?" she asked before waving to Anders and Fenris. "Did you boys sleep well last night? Did you share a bed? Did Anders show you that delightful electricity thing?"

Fenris glowered, Anders lifted his hand in a two-fingered salute without looking up from the page.

"I'll take that as a no," she said, unabashed. "If the answer had been yes, you would both be in better moods today. I still think it would be brilliant – Anders with his sparklefingers, and Fenris with his glowing orgasm on demand."

Now Anders looked up, giving Hawke a venomous glare. "You told her!"

"You thought I wouldn't?" Hawke asked while he did something below the table that made Isabela squirm and laugh.

"I should have set your hair on fire earlier."

Fenris had to agree that it wasn't funny. The last thing he wanted was the power to reduce Anders to a sodden heap at the drop of a hat. There was nothing the magic he bore in his skin did not find a way to twist.

Hawke ignored Anders' threat, speaking instead to Isabela, "I had almost a small book for him from Padraic, but I don't think he's reading anything good."

"Worse," Anders said, pushing the papers away and running his fingers through his hair, adding streaks of ink from his fingertips to the pale gold strands. "This is beyond me and Padraic says he already knows no one else in Kirkwall's Circle knows more about it than he does, which is next to nothing."

Even with Isabela still in his lap, Fenris saw Hawke's expression slip into all business. "Does he suggest anyone who might know?"

Anders shook his head. "Outside of Tevinter—"

Fenris cut him off. _"No!"_ No, he would not go to Tevinter, no he would not solicit help from a Tevinter mage. There was no discussion or argument. "It is not open to discussion."

Anders sighed heavily. "I knew you would say that, so let me finish what I was going to say. Outside of Tevinter, I know one mage who could help, but I'm not much more eager to see him than Fenris is to think of going to the Imperium."

"Spit it out, Blondie," Varric said, having just escorted another stone-faced dwarf out after wrapping up negotiations for fish oil of all things. "Who is it?"

Anders set the quill aside, straightened the pages that Padraic had sent, capped the ink pot, poured himself another tankard of watered-down ale, and generally dithered rather than answering the question.

"Mage," Fenris growled, "answer the question. If you know who might help, tell me."

"Widald Amell," Anders finally said, before tipping his head back to drain his tankard in one long pull.

Varric let out a long, low whistle. "The Hero of Ferelden? You want to just go ask _him_ for help with this?"

"I know you said you knew him," Hawke said, "but do you know him well enough to ask that kind of favor?"

"I'd say so," Anders said dryly, although he slumped down more in seat. "He's the reason I became a Gray Warden. I went into the Fade with him, fought demons, darkspawn, and dragons with him."

Fenris knew his expression was skeptical, and Anders caught it as well. "Don't worry Fenris, he might just cut my hand off for you."

Fenris was surprised to see Anders refill his tankard and drain it a second time. "He's probably still pissed off at me, but I think he would do it for Justice even if he claps me in the nonmagical kind of manacles once he gets us free."

"Why?" Isabela asked, leaning forward. "Dal didn't strike me as that kind of man when I… met him in Denerim. He knew his way around belowdecks if you know what I'm saying."

"It doesn't matter," Anders said. "It will be my problem. He isn't the kind of man to punish other people for one man's mistakes."

Fenris watched Anders scrub his face with his hands again, looking suddenly ten years older than he had before the conversation took this turn. "It means we'll have to leave Kirkwall. He'll either be in Amaranthine or Vigil's Keep unless he's off being a big damn hero again."

"And if he is?" Fenris asked.

"Oh, my old friends will probably spend a lot of time arguing about whether it's fair to put me in a prison cell until he returns when I'm already chained to the biggest stick in the mud in Thedas. Then Oghren will suggest we get drunk, Velanna will insult me, Sigrun will ask a thousand questions, and Nathaniel will try to have a brood-off with Fenris. It will be brilliant."

If it was going to be so brilliant, Fenris thought, why did Anders' recitation sound more like a dirge? There was more to this story than the mage wanted to tell.


	8. Chapter 8

The Hanged Man's so-called ale was foul: it burned on the way down – it burned on the way out – it had particles in it that were best left unexamined, and it tasted like an alley cat's piss, but it had alcohol in it, and when one happened to be a mage sharing headspace with a teetotaling Fade spirit who had briefly lifted the drinking ban, the alcohol was the part that really mattered.

Anders wanted to enjoy the feeling of being more than tipsy and just a little less than drunk, but he had other things on his mind that ruined his enjoyment. Widald Amell. Dal, to his friends, Hero of Ferelden, Warden-Commander, and living bloody legend to everyone else.

Everyone wanted to know about the Hero of Ferelden. Other than the long trip from Kirkwall to Amaranthine, why wouldn't Anders want to go back to Ferelden, where mages were held in much higher esteem than in the Free Marches?

That, Anders decided, was none of their damned business.

"Right," he said, raising his head from where he had been staring blankly at the sheets of paper covered in Bethany's tidy handwriting and runes older than Kirkwall. He had been hoping some answer would coalesce out of the ink if he stared hard enough, but it hadn't. And damn the paper while he was at it.

"We've seen the smith, we've been experimented on by a dwarf, we've even taken the chained apostate to the Gallows for a game of 'how ironic is this?' and I'm still stuck with the dour elf." Anders complained, ignoring Fenris' glare.

"But before we go traipsing off to Ferelden, someone please tell me there's something closer to home we can try."

Fenris tapped the pages in front of Anders. "You're the only one among us who can understand this—"

"Except for Daisy," Varric cut in. "Why not let her have a look? Then you probably have tried everything."

Both Anders and Fenris glowered at the suggestion.

"Yes," Fenris said. "Let us involve the witch. Perhaps she can ask a demon to assist us."

"If it means blood magic, I'd rather stay chained to Fenris." From the corner of his eye Anders saw Fenris swing his head around to look at him, but he kept his attention on Varric. He was fairly certain that if he met Fenris' gaze what he would see would be a promise of amputated limbs in their future.

"That's nice, boys," Isabela said blithely as she swung herself up off of Hawke's lap and headed for the door. "I'll be back with Merrill in a two shakes, and you can tell her yourselves."

Anders started to push out of his seat, calling after her, "Isabela—"

"Let her go," Hawke interrupted. "I'll be certain to spank Merrill if she tries any horrible unwanted blood magic rites on you two helpless, unsuspecting men."

He dug in his backpack and pulled out one of several bottles of Antivan brandy that Anders knew he had stashed in there. That man was a packrat, as though his torn trouser collection weren't proof enough. "We can try this while we wait. I picked it up…" He tipped his head and stared into space trying to remember just where he had picked it up. "…I think it was in the Chantry storerooms. That should add a certain delicious apostate flavor to it, don't you think?"

While he spoke, he pried the top off the brandy with the thin knife he kept on his belt. "You said your thoughts needed lubricating, didn't you?"

"I said lubricating," Anders retorted. "Not greased right off the skids."

It wasn't always easy to tell his thoughts from Justice's. Sometimes he knew without a doubt that it was Justice's disapproval, Justice's thoughts, Justice's demands that drove him, other times he would find himself taking actions that only in retrospect seemed more the spirit's doing than his own.

This time he could feel Justice's disapproving twist behind his eyes, telling him that this self-indulgence was going too far, that the drinking the first night was bad enough, that his thoughts in his bed the second night were worse, and that this was _unworthy._

"Sod unworthy," he said, ignoring Hawke's raised eyebrow as he raised his tankard. "Why aren't you pouring yet?"

He should not do this, he should keep his faculties clear, he should not—

 _Widald. Amell_.

Justice's voice went silent.

Despite that, Anders only sipped the brandy. He had made his point to himself and to Justice, and wanted to keep some of his faculties about him for Merrill's arrival.

Fenris declined Hawke's offer, but Varric took a dash of brandy in his mug and joined Anders and Fenris at their end of the table.

"Let's say Daisy can't help you any more than anyone else has so far," he said. "Should we start planning a trip?"

"We?" Fenris asked pointedly.

"Well, you," Varric conceded. "I can't really leave Kirkwall for as long as it would take to get to Amaranthine and back."

Hawke joined them so that all four men were gathered at one end of Varric's table with Anders sitting at the head. "I can't go either," he said after taking a swig straight from the bottle. "I can't leave Mother, and I think this qunari situation is going to blow up soon. As much as I'd like to meet my cousin, I can't go."

Anders kept his eyes fixed on the swirling brandy in his tankard. He had known that he could not expect Hawke to drop all his other obligations to go jaunting off to Ferelden, but he would have felt better about facing Dal with another Amell at his side.

"I will not travel with the witch," Fenris said firmly. "I do not think we could convince Isabela to leave your side, Aveline has commitments here."

"And I am not going anywhere with the choir boy," Anders added just as firmly. "Which means it's just you and me, Captain Happypants."

Hawke thumped the brandy bottle on the table. "I'll send Brutal with you."

"Brutal?" Anders considered the four-legged siege engine that Hawke called a dog. "But he's imprinted on you."

"And he'll do what I tell him, and if I tell him it's important that you two get back to Kirkwall alive, he'll make sure it happens."

Anders' pictured Brutal meeting Dal's mabari hound, Walter and winced. There would either be blood or copious amounts of drool. Either way, it was bound to be messy.

Maker, how he missed Ser Pounce-a-lot.

 _Ser Pounce-a-lot!_ Anders must have made some kind of sound because Fenris tugged on the chain. "You have thought of something."

"Nothing that will help us," Anders said, but he couldn't help smiling just a little. If they had to go to Amaranthine, there was at least one good thing that could come of it before they found Dal and he faced the consequences of running away years ago. "I was thinking of an old friend."

"You may socialize when we are free of one another," Fenris told him.

"Come on, Broody," Varric chided playfully. "Let's all take a moment to be amazed that Anders has old friends at all."

"Mind that," Anders said. "I used to be quite the social butterfly. And I have heard that being struck by lightning can make a person's hair fall out." He stared pointedly at Varric's chest – and chest hair – until Varric splayed a hand out to cover it from his sight.

"If you did that, Blondie, half the women in Kirkwall would throw themselves into the ocean."

"And a quarter of the men," Isabela said cheerfully as she came through the door, Merrill in tow behind her.

"Only an eighth," Varric corrected. "Most of the men aren't 'flexible' enough to appreciate what I have out on display."

"Why do they have to be flexible?" Merrill asked guilelessly. "They don't have to bend down to see it, just look down a little. It's right there in the open after all."

"Not that kind of flexible, Kitten," Isabela said with an indulgent smile. "Now have a look at Anders' papers there so we can see what comes next."

Anders passed the papers to Merrill and watched her settle into a chair farther down the table, pulling her feet up off the floor to tuck them under thighs. Her usual vague bemused expression fading into something stronger, more knowing as she shuffled through the pages.

He had to admit that he was surprised that she actually appeared to understand any of what she was reading. He supposed that somewhere in the back of his mind he had written her off as lacking any intelligence when perhaps she was less unintelligent and more stupid and misguided.

While she read, Isabela let Hawke pour her some of the brandy and produced a deck of cards. She riffled through the cards with a thoughtless grace before dealing out a hand of diamondback for everyone except Merrill.

"What?" she asked when Fenris frowned at her. "If you two end up running off to Amaranthine together, this might be one of my last chances to steal you blind, I mean, win at cards."

They played diamondback, and for all Isabela's threats of stealing, she won no more often than Varric or Hawke did.

Anders and Fenris, on the other hand, did not win at all.

"I knew that playing three thieves was a bad idea," Anders groused as he threw down another losing hand and watched Varric smugly gather his winnings out of the center of the table.

"I prefer rogue," Hawke said loftily. "To go with my roguish charm, roguish good looks, and roguish sense of humor."

"A thief by any other name…" Fenris said, unexpectedly paraphrasing a famous Fereldan playwright.

"…would still be a bastardy thief," Anders finished for him.

"Um—' Merrill interrupted what would surely have become a heated debate about the nature of thievery. "I'm done?"

"Any luck?" Hawke asked, swiveling in his seat to give her his full attention.

She shook her head. "I made a few notes that might help Anders or whoever he's going to see, but this isn't elvehn magic, and only a few things were familiar. I'm really sorry," she added, looking past Hawke to Fenris and Anders.

Anders really wished she would stop looking so cute and vulnerable. It simply was not fair for someone who consorted with demons to look like Merrill – an elf who seemed more likely to cry than call dark magics down on someone who upset her.

 _Appearances mean nothing._

No, Anders corrected himself and Justice, appearances meant many things, but they could lie. No one would look at him and guess that he was a possessed Gray Warden mage after all.

"You did your best," Varric assured her, when neither Anders nor Fenris made a move to be conciliatory. "I'm sure the boys would thank you, but you know they were kicked out of finishing school."

Anders held out his tankard to Hawke and let him pour in another generous splash of brandy.

"Looks like we're off to Amaranthine," he said to Fenris. "I can't wait."

• • •

"No!" Anders tried to fold his arms to go with his denial and got a jerk on the chain from Fenris for his effort.

"Be reasonable," Hawke wheedled. "We're doing this for your own good."

"You're doing this to have one last joke at our expense before we leave," Fenris snapped.

Anders and all of Hawke's traveling companions were gathered together in the Hanged Man just hours before the ship was due to leave for Amaranthine with Anders and Fenris as passengers. They were all staring at a beautifully embroidered length of cloth that Merrill was holding up for their approval.

"No," Hawke said, "I am thinking about something other than your pride. You two can't go jaunting off to Ferelden looking like you just escaped from prison. You'll attract too much attention and you," he leveled a finger at Fenris, "are already going to stick out like a sore thumb. You are both going to let Merrill sew that over the cuffs and chain and you are going to use the cover story Varric came up with."

"I am not telling people that it's a newlywed custom," Anders said hotly. "Are you mad? Everyone can tell we can't stand each other and you want us to say we're _married?"_

"It's an exotic newlywed custom," Varric said patiently. "To go with Fenris' exotic looks. That way when someone says 'newlywed custom? I've never heard of such a thing,' you can point at Fenris and say, 'and have you ever seen an elf like him?' Throw in a bit of doe eyes and everyone will shut up."

"There will be no doe eyes," Fenris snapped. "And I will not pretend to be his—" He jerked a thumb at Anders with an expression of disgust. "—husband!"

"You're no prize either," Anders said, nettled. "As if I'd marry a man like you. As if I'd _marry!"_

"Shut. Up!" Aveline's bellow settled the argument faster than anything else their friends had tried. "You're going to do it if I have to hold Fenris down while Hawke sits on Anders' chest. This is not about embarrassing you—"

"That's just a bonus," Isabela added helpfully.

"Shut up, whore," Aveline snapped. "This is not about embarrassing you. We want both of your sorry arses back in Kirkwall."

"Are we certain about that?" Sebastian asked. "I'd settle for just getting Fenris back."

"Hawke," Aveline looked to their fearless leader. "Who do I hit first?"

"Oh, I don't know," Hawke drawled. "How about whoever pisses you off next?"

Anders pressed his lips tightly closed and held his wrist out to Merrill.


	9. Chapter 9

"Messeres will want to see their cabin," the bosun, Caleb, said so unctuously that Fenris was certain that Hawke or perhaps Varric or Isabela – or all three for that matter – had slipped the man a little something extra to treat their unusual passengers like dignitaries instead of whatever it was they really were.

When Caleb held the cabin door open and referred to it as "the honeymoon suite," Fenris still could not decide which of his erstwhile friends had paid extra for this treatment, but he made a silent oath to find out when he returned to Kirkwall. No one would die when he found out, but someone might wish they had.

"And messeres'," Caleb dropped his eyes to Brutal, who had stayed at Fenris' and Anders' sides from the moment Hawke and their friends had seen them up the gangplank, "dog?"

"Will be staying with us," Anders said wearily.

Caleb looked surprised, but the power of the coin he had been given obviously won out. "If you two would like some… private time, you may send it up on deck as long as it does not bite."

"He will not bite," Fenris said firmly, looking down at the mabari. "Will you?"

Brutal whined softly and dropped his head.

"He will not bite," Fenris repeated, satisfied by the dog's response.

"As you wish, messeres." Caleb ducked his head and hurried up the hallway, doubtless to get away from the strange knife-ear and his "husband." Among Hawke and his friends Fenris could almost forget that most humans regarded elves as something lesser, but he found that awareness returned to him as sharp as a blade when he was among strangers.

The _Silverite Maiden_ was normally a merchant ship, ill-equipped for guests, particularly at such short notice. Hawke had called in old favors with Athenril on their behalf and Isabela had been his go-between to grease a few palms with Hawke's sovereigns to arrange their passage after only two more nights of sleeping in Anders' clinic.

At least after the first night they had moved two cots close together to allow them separate sleeping spaces. He discovered quickly enough that sharing a room with Anders was anything but restful; the mage's sleep was broken by nightmares and even when he made no sound, he had a tendency to thrash that jerked on the chain between them.

Fenris dourly eyed the cabin and its single bed barely wider than Anders' bed back at the clinic. They would be back to sleeping together unless they slept on the floor. Perhaps he should demand that they sleep in shifts.

"I should warn you," Anders said, looking around while Brutal chose a corner and turned several circles before settling down with his head on his paws to watch their every move.

Fenris cast a glance over his shoulder at him. "Now what?"

"I get seasick."

• • •

Anders hung over the railing and shuddered as another spasm gripped him. Fenris had no idea what the man could still vomit up when he had been at it for hours.

"It is fortunate," he noted blandly, "that Hawke does not require your assistance at sea."

Anders grunted and turned to sink to the deck, bracing himself against the rail. He was pale and sweating and apparently lacked the energy to retort. Fenris squatted in front of him and offered a water skin. The last thing he needed was for Anders to get so dehydrated that he was forced to carry the mage to their cabin.

Once again he entertained vague thoughts of simple amputation. Hawke would disapprove, but he would get over it.

Anders took the skin with a groan and squeezed out just enough water to wet his mouth.

"Can't you heal this?" Fenris asked.

"'S'not a sickness 'zactly," Anders said, and Fenris marveled that even his voice sounded nauseated. "An' I used the best herbs I had. Be worse without 'em."

"Worse?" Fenris asked incredulously.

Anders tried to nod, but the motion seemed ill-advised, making him push himself up to retch over the railing again.

"Your husband don't have sea legs, huh?" observed one of the deck hands, who had been watching Anders and Fenris since they had come up from below decks to allow Anders to vomit in the fresh air.

 _Husband?_

Void take Varric and his "cover stories" and Hawke for supporting it, and add in Isabela for good measure just for the glee she had taken in the idea. Newlyweds indeed.

He gritted his teeth and swung his eyes up to glare at the man, saying simply, "No."

The man flinched under the glare and tried a placating tone, "It don't always stay so bad. Sometimes it gets better in a day or two." He shrugged. "Sometimes it don't."

"It'll get better," Anders said, leaving off his retching to slide back down to the deck again. "I've done it before. Maker but I hate traveling by sea."

He held out a hand for the water skin and Fenris passed it back to him, letting him rinse the taste of bile out of his mouth before taking it back.

Perhaps trying to curry favor, the deck hand offered them a smile filled with half-rotted teeth. "If you don't mind my saying, congratulations. I got a cousin who married an elf, they got a little boy now. I see them sometimes when we make port in Wycome."

Fenris and Anders exchanged a look before turning their eyes up to the deck hand again.

"And I think your wedding dress looks good on you," the man added before hurrying away to join the other hands in repairing spare sails.

Anders spared a look down at his robes and groaned. "Wedding dress?"

• • •

Sleeping arrangements were awkward with the need to have Anders on the outside to give him room to be sick in the bucket they had appropriated from a storage cubby. Brutal attempted to make things even more awkward by joining them until Fenris and Anders united to shove him out of the bunk.

"I'm a cat person," Anders told the dog. "Not a canine person of any persuasion."

Fenris assumed that was a pointed comment not just about dogs, but wolves, to which his only response could be, "Good."

Their first night on the ship was punctuated by Anders' groans when he was sick, and by his moans when he was dreaming. All in all, by the time dawn broke, Fenris was even more tired than he had been when they went to bed, and more than willing to kill the first person to say anything to annoy him, which would be Anders, without a doubt.

"Do you always thrash like that?" he asked Anders when he finally sat up, scrubbing his cheeks with his hands and pushing stray strands of blond hair out of his face.

"I don't know," Anders admitted. "Probably? I've slept alone for so long it's hard to say. It's one of the wonderful things they don't put on the Gray Warden recruiting posters. Not that there are Gray Warden recruiting posters, but if there were, they would not say, 'join the Gray Wardens, travel to foreign places, meet exotic monsters, kill them, and spend the rest of your greatly shortened life having the kind of nightmares that make you want to throw yourself in the ocean rather than face your pillow one more time.'"

He swung his feet off the bunk and smiled wryly over his shoulder at Fenris. "It might cut into the number of people willing to give up their lives to fight darkspawn, you know."

"And why did you do it?" Fenris asked, sliding over to sit beside him, taking his chestplate when Anders handed it to him without being asked. He had stripped off the armor pieces that he could and slept only in his leathers. It was anything but comfortable, but sleeping nude was not an option.

"Altruism," Anders said carelessly while he retrieved his own feathered shoulder piece. Fenris did not know if Anders would have preferred not to sleep in his robes, and he did not care. The last thing the mage needed was any encouragement for his baser needs.

"Liar."

"Because Dal invoked the Right of Conscription," Anders said, not looking at him. "Widald, that is. He got King bloody Alistair to back him up on it. He kept me out of templar hands for a little while at least, until those bastards managed to get a templar into the Wardens just to hover over me, watching every little thing I did."

He handed Fenris his shoulder armor next before leaning over to rummage a packet of herbs out of his belt where it lay beside the bunk. "Finish getting dressed. I think the herbs are going to work better today if all this talking about ancient history doesn't make me sick all over again."

• • •

It took three days for Anders to get his sea legs, but eventually he did adjust. He still turned greenish when the ship hit a particularly large swell, but Fenris saw him choke down a bowl of broth without bringing it back up again. He hoped this meant that Anders had turned a corner, because he was growing tired of the smell of vomit and the sound of retching.

On the afternoon of the third day, the ship's captain, Tamas Mustow came to join them at the railing where Anders and Fenris had been silently watching the water, each engaged in his own thoughts.

"Your husband looks better," he said to Fenris, and Fenris wondered why it was that everyone seemed to assume that he was the dominant one between them, and thus should be addressed while Anders was almost ignored.

Of course, he would be the dominant one if they were truly a couple, but that was not the point. The point was did outsiders read something in their dynamic?

"His _husband_ feels better," Anders cut in, peevishly enough that Fenris thought his thoughts might have been following a similar path. Likely he did not agree with who would be dominant. "And he's right here."

The captain smiled placatingly. "You've been sick, messere, I didn't want to bother you, but now that you're feeling better, your friend Isabela suggested you two would want to celebrate. Something about an elven tradition of dancing? Stefan over there," he waved a hand back at a knot of deckhands who were watching them curiously, "is an excellent accordion player, and I have a few bottles of rum I have been saving for a special occasion."

At the mention of rum, Anders paled and shook his head. "Too sick for drink or dance," he said hurriedly.

Fenris moved Isabela to the top of his list of people to have words with when he returned to Kirkwall.

He summoned some of the courtesy he might have used when dealing with the Arishok – after all, the captain was master of this ship – and shook his head, though there was no way he could summon a smile. "As you can see, he is too ill. The dancing is," he groped for a word, "optional."

The captain flicked his gaze between Fenris and Anders, then back to Fenris before he nodded. "I can see you're busy enough just taking care of him. If you two feel well enough before we make port, the men never say no to a chance to celebrate."

"We will remember your courtesy," Fenris assured him. "And Isabela's for letting you know of the tradition."

"Too right," Anders muttered. "Wouldn't want to forget to give her a proper thank you."

• • •

On their fifth day at sea, they were becalmed. The wind had dropped away and the ocean around them was almost as placid as a lake. Anders seemed more himself than he had since they had left Kirkwall, and even ate a full breakfast, tucking away so much food that Fenris thought he was trying to eat five days' worth of meals at one sitting to make up for lost time.

He was concerned that the captain would see Anders' appetite and renew his offer of celebration and dance, but he and the entire crew seemed preoccupied. They spoke in low tones when they spoke at all, and Fenris saw every man watching the ocean.

They were all edgy, quick to snap at one another until the captain set them to holy-stoning the deck. The men each had a square of sandstone with a hole in the middle that they rubbed across the wooden deck, scouring away salt deposits and dirt, leaving the surface smooth and gleaming.

Anders and Fenris moved to the stern of the ship, away from the men. Anders had a blanket around his shoulders to keep warm where the scanty upper portion of his robe left him bare.

They watched the ocean in silence until Anders shifted and kicked his leg out. "Brutal," he complained, "what did I tell you about licking my leg?"

Fenris looked down to tell the mabari to back off, but Brutal was curled up against the railing, napping with his head propped on a coil of rope.

What Anders had kicked away, and which was now trying to snake up under his robe again, was a slender violet tentacle, gleaming with seawater, tiny suckers flexing and grasping.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who c/ped the wrong chapter and didn't catch it for a day? Why yes, that would be me.

First off, Anders hated boats.

Second off, Anders hated boats.

Third off, with a slimy tentacle creature from the depths of the sea trying to get a grope up his robes, _Anders hated boats!_

And fourth off, that sound that escaped him when he realized that the wet "tongue" on his ankle was not Brutal's nor was it a tongue? That was not a yelp!

His reaction after not yelping was to grab his staff off his back and jab the bladed end into the violet tentacle that had been wantonly violating his personal space. The tentacle stiffened before jerking back over the side of the ship, leaving nothing more than a translucent, viscous ichor in its wake.

"What in the name of Andraste's bountiful backside was that?"

Fenris cautiously peered over the railing, Aveline's sword in his hand. "Gone. At least for now."

Anders rucked up his robe to wipe his ankle. It was only a bit damp, but he couldn't seem to convince himself that it wasn't coated in some disgusting slime.

"Varric would tell me not to say this," Anders began, "but it bears mentioning that whatever was on the other end of that tentacle was probably very large."

When shouts arose from the bow, Anders considered that perhaps there was a good reason for Varric insisting that people should stop tempting the capricious forces of the universe with silly statements like that.

Together he and Fenris swung around to see tentacles as thick as a man's torso flailing over the side of the ship. Anders pushed down a tiny screaming part of his mind that wasn't Justice and which wanted to remember the Mother and broodmothers and generally horrific things about being a Gray Warden. He promised himself that he could have a small fit of the heebiejeebies when this was over, but until then he was bloody well going to hold it together. If he didn't, Justice would probably hold it together for him, and that did not always work out so well.

One of the tentacles wrapped around a barrel and hoisted it into the air, squeezing it so tightly that the barrel burst, spraying the deck and frightened sailors with fresh water.

Anders exchanged a look with Fenris and groaned. "Whatever you do, just don't glow."

Fenris practically dragged Anders into the thickest part of the tentacles. He swung Aveline's sword while Anders threw out what spells he could, cursing the exigencies of shipboard life for keeping him from his favored fireballs.

He used ice and lightning in place of fire. At sea, the lightning came more easily than ever, arcing from his fingertips to dance snakelike over the tentacles that shaded from delicate violet at their tips to darkest purple, virtually black where they disappeared into the water.

"Get them back," Fenris snapped to the captain.

Anders didn't spare time to wonder whether Fenris was warning him about the tentacles or about the mage. As far as he was concerned they could fear both, and he would show them why.

Most of the deck hands stayed, bringing out heavy cutlasses to help Anders and Fenris while the few noncombatants scrambled belowdecks to wait out the fighting. They fought with swords and with magic as tentacles swarmed over both port and starboard railings, blindly picking up anything they touched, some even wrapping the mast.

Despite his earlier musing on tempting the universe, Anders thought that the fight was going rather well. The tentacles tended to draw back when they were wounded, and so far the injuries on their side were relegated to bumps and bruises from tentacle swipes.

A scream from one of the hands alerted him that their good fortune was shifting. A tentacle had caught a deck hand in a grip around his legs and had hoisted him into the air. Anders winced when it squeezed and the sharp cracks of breaking bones cut through the shouts and grunts of effort from the defenders.

Fenris snarled something in Arcanum and dragged Anders behind him to close the distance to the tentacle holding the hand, incidentally dragging them into the thickest concentration of the things.

"Bastard," Anders hissed, ducking as one swung just above his head. That close he could see that the suckers on the thickest parts of the tentacles were as large as his face.

"Complain later," Fenris snapped. "Ice now." He used his left hand to indicate where the tentacle lay over the railing.

Anders felt a flash of surprise that Fenris was actually _requesting_ the use of magic, but that was another thing that could be given consideration later. On a more immediate basis, he followed Fenris' instructions, casting a wave of biting ice out to slow the tentacle's motion, giving Fenris time to gather himself for his attack.

It must have been muscle memory that led Fenris to grip Aveline's longsword in two hands and attempt to leap into the air to bring his weight down behind a blow aimed to shatter the ice Anders had called into being. How else to explain how he forgot that there was a full-grown human man attached to him at the wrist?

Anders was thrown into the railing, the impact driving the breath from his body in a grunt that included the awareness that _something_ had cracked, but that was something that would have to queue up with things that could be considered later. He fumbled to keep hold of his staff when a thinner tentacle slid across it and jerked. Fenris was still striking at the ice, his body was screaming for attention to its pain, and the tentacle was simply much stronger than he was. He lost his staff and then lost his footing when another flailing tentacle found his ankle and hoisted him into the air feet first, cracking his head against the railing along the way.

Some people might have worried about drowning or even about the fact that his robe was falling toward his face, displaying the fact that he had always preferred going _au naturel_ with robes. No, his thought process had more to do with his regret about not wearing boots that day. _I am never going barefoot again._ Blame the blow to the head.

He knew when Justice took the reins – the ringing in his ears receded and the world took on a blue tinge past the Fade light that filled his eyes. He was still there, just as Justice was always still there, but now he took the back-of-the-mind role while Justice tried to keep them both alive.

His thoughts took on such clarity when he was Justice. In some ways, it was so much simpler. Justice did not care about his boots or his currently exposed bits. Justice cared about the important things, and at that moment, survival was important because none of their other goals could be achieved if they were dead.

Justice saw Fenris dropping the sword to get a grip on the railing to keep Anders from being hauled overboard, which would have inevitably dragged him along into the deep thanks to that damned chain. Justice saw the deck hands finish cutting through the frozen tentacle to allow their comrade to drop to the deck. He saw the others still hacking at the diminishing number of tentacles, he saw Brutal rising up on his back legs to rake his front paws over a tentacle before he closed his jaws over a tip that was barely thicker than Anders' wrist.

It was all there, held in a crystalline moment, then Justice shouted out the words of a spell that Anders would never have tried to cast staffless and with his bare backside pointed at the sky, not to mention with an elf chained to one of his arms. Calling lightning was quite enough bother when on two feet on solid ground.

Lightning flashed out from his fingertips, dancing down the length of the tentacle, jumping from one to the next and leaping to a third. For a moment even with Justice riding him, he screamed when the tentacle spasmed, breaking – no, _crushing_ – his ankle, but it also dropped him to the deck, which at least eased the blaring pain in his wrist where the manacle that bound him to Fenris had been pulled tight while Fenris had kept him from being dragged into the water.

Justice paid no attention to Anders' thought that they were going to have to thank the bastard later. He was occupied with pushing a flash of blue healing magic into their ankle to let him stand, also ignoring Fenris, who was retrieving the longsword and growling oaths in Arcanum.

Once upright, Justice ruthlessly dragged the power for one last spell out of Anders' body, leaving him feeling as though his bones were hollow and brittle – and for all he knew, they were. The magic went out, shooting up into the sky, swirling clouds out of the clear blue, breathing life back into the dead wind that had left them becalmed and helpless, and dragging the sudden fury of a tempest down onto the ocean that harbored their attacker. Lightning began to fall around them like rain, striking the water, the tentacles, and the ship's mast with equal indiscrimination.

Anders was the twist of incredulity in the back of his mind. _Are you mad?_ At the same time he could not help being more than a little jealous that Justice could do so much with his magic, so much faster than he could achieve himself.

Justice was coolly certain that they could survive a lightning strike – they had done it before – but they could not survive being eaten, or the drowning that would likely precede it.

Lightning-struck tentacles thrashed wildly, jittering and jerking as the crackling electricity stole their owner's control until whatever was on the other end of those monstrous appendages retreated from the sudden raging elements, taking its tentacles with it.

The captain shouted orders that had deckhands swarming the rigging, taking advantage of the localized storm to get the ship moving again.

Fenris clamped a hand over Anders' wrist before Justice could see to the crewman they had rescued. The lyrium laid in his skin touched one of the cracks in Anders' flesh and Justice's mind sang. Their body _sang._

And Fenris' eyes grew wide.

"Newlyweds." The captain's comment cut through a moment that had gone thick with tension.

Fenris dropped his hand, Justice relinquished control to Anders, and both men turned their attention to the captain.

"Just when I was starting to wonder, you two go and have a moment." His lips pulled wide in a humorless approximation of a smile. "Now I want to know what _that_ was." He made vague hand gestures along his arms and at his eyes, perhaps attempting to illustrate Justice's glowing manifestation.

Anders darted a look at Fenris before opening his mouth to answer.

"Magic," Fenris said before Anders could say anything. "I married an apostate."


	11. Chapter 11

Telling Captain Mustow that Anders was an apostate might not have been the swiftest way to thaw the chill that Anders' display of Justice had wrought, but when the apostate then set about healing the crew's injuries before tending to his own, Fenris saw the hostility in the men's eyes fade. Particularly when Anders, with Fenris at his side, knelt to heal the crushed legs of the man the tentacle had picked up.

When their crewmate stood up and did an awkward little jig before settling down to sit on one of the surviving water barrels to rub the residual ache out of his legs, the men cheered and pumped their fists in the air. Self-interest won over Chantry teachings with these people, and even Fenris could see why.

Anders smiled weakly and swayed on his feet before Fenris realized that Anders had healed everyone but himself. He was pale, his upper lip dotted with sweat from the effort.

"Fool mage," Fenris growled, low enough for the crew to miss in their celebration of their survival and good health. "Why did you not see to yourself?"

Anders shook his head and swiped a hand over his face before turning away from Fenris to get the captain's attention. "If any of your men need anything more, come get me. We daring apostates need our beauty rest."

Fenris tried not to glare when Anders gave him a patently contrived doe-eyed look. "And my husband is worried about me. I'm going to let him put me to bed."

One of the crewmen brought the captain Anders' staff, retrieved from where it had fetched up against the railing when the tentacles retreated. Mustow handed it over to Fenris before he smirked and clapped Anders on the shoulder; he missed Anders' wince of pain, but Fenris saw it. "I don't usually hold with apostates, but after what you two have done for my ship and crew, you're all right with me. I saw the look you two were giving each other." Fenris bristled at the broad wink he gave Anders. "We'll ignore any noise from your cabin for the next few hours."

Anders grinned brightly and turned to Fenris, losing the smile the instant his back was turned on the captain.

"Help me downstairs," he said through gritted teeth. "And mind the rib you cracked because you're an _oaf."_

Fenris took Anders' upper arm in a hard grip, ignoring his protests about being manhandled.

"Or elfhandled or whatever you want to call it," Anders griped as Fenris pushed him through the door into their cabin, closing the door in Brutal's face.

"You will heal yourself," Fenris told him when the door was closed. "I will not have Hawke blaming me for letting you die."

"Not happening," Anders replied, lowering himself to the bunk with a soft groan. "Not until I've had time to rest. I'm just about hollow, I've used so much mana."

Fenris removed Aveline's sword and propped it at the head of the bed within his easy reach before unbuckling his chest piece and spiked pauldrons. "Why did you not heal yourself first?"

"I have a better question." Anders pressed his lips tightly together while he shifted in on the bunk to make room for Fenris and bring his feet onto the bed. "How did you come up with that answer for the captain so quickly? It's almost as though you've been thinking about being married to me. I don't want to break your heart or anything, but I'm not the marrying kind."

Fenris scoffed and waited for Anders to move as far against the bulkhead as he could before he settled next to him. "I have thought about many contingencies, mage, not for your sake, but for my own, as your body would drag me down if the captain and his men threw _you_ overboard."

"Like what?" Anders turned his head to give Fenris the full benefit of wide golden-brown eyes. "Tell me a story about contingencies while I let my magical muscles rest."

"Sleep," Fenris suggested, mostly as a means of getting Anders to shut up. He had things he needed to consider and that was nigh impossible when Anders never seemed to close his mouth. "Then we will both be able to rest."

"No chance," Anders said. "I'm not sleeping until I pass out."

He looked… Fenris searched Anders' face for the right word for his expression, but the only word that came to mind was "haunted."

"Why?"

"Let's talk about other things," Anders said, and Fenris felt his brows drop in a scowl. Every time he asked Anders a question, he deflected or simply refused to answer.

"I want to know about that look on your face when you touched Justice out there," Anders said. "Was it good for you too?"

"So help me," Fenris growled, "I will rip your tongue out."

The jolt of pleasure that sang through the lyrium in his skin was nothing he wished to dwell on, and was nothing he would ever discuss with Anders. His only consolation was that the jolt had not made him spend himself in his leathers the way Anders had lost control at the Gallows.

He felt a slow, cruel smile spread over his lips. "No, I won't rip your tongue out. I shall activate my tattoos and watch you writhe."

Anders' eyes went wide. "You wouldn't."

Fenris realized he liked this very much. Hawke would not even be able to chastise him. In fact, knowing the man, he would likely approve. "Try me."

"Sleeping now."

• • •

The last two days of the voyage to Amaranthine were uneventful. The crew gave them a wider berth after the battle, but none of them were overtly hostile. As an unexpected benefit, no further mention was made of nuptial celebrations.

Fenris noticed Anders growing more tense when the Fereldan coast first came into view. He spoke less, frowned more, and fiddled constantly with the cuff on his wrist, turning and turning it until Fenris closed his hand over it to stop the annoying fidgeting.

"What is your problem?" he asked. "Do you fear what the wardens will do to you?"

Anders jerked his hand away from Fenris' grasp, scowling over at him. "Why spoil the surprise? Don't worry, I'm sure it will be everything you could hope for and more. Except the part where Dal is a mage, because how you must hate knowing how much influence he has with King Alistair."

"What I hate is hearing the word 'mage' from you," Fenris retorted. "Because it is always accompanied by yet another rant about the rights of mages."

"A rant he agrees with," Anders snapped. "King Alistair tried to grant his boon of allowing the mages to practice without the Circle and Chantry. There are free mages in Ferelden. Not many, but some. How do you feel about that?"

Fenris drew a deep breath, forcing himself to push his anger down into the bottomless well he had for it. Instead he closed his fingers over Anders' wrist in an iron grasp and turned to drag the man off the deck, out of sight of the deck hands who saw most things that passed between them.

He ignored Anders' protests and attempts to dig his feet in on the deck, easily getting him down to their quarters. When it came down to a straight up battle of strength between a mage and a warrior, Fenris would always bet on the warrior.

Once the door was closed, Anders let loose a stream of invective. "You dog humping – sorry Brutal – bronto blowing, son of a—"

Fenris let power flow through the tattoos in his hand.

Anders' eyes rolled back in his head behind a blue haze of power – his or Fenris', Fenris could not be sure, the color was distressingly similar.

On the bright side, it shut Anders up quite thoroughly.

He held the steady flow of power into his hand until Anders started to sway before spitefully pushing a final burst through the lyrium. He was ready when Anders' knees buckled, stepping in to catch him and pick him up before unceremoniously dropping him into their bunk.

He had enough time to feel smug about finding a way to finally stave off the interminable rants about mage rights this, templar abuses that, before Anders clamped his free hand over Fenris' wrist in an implacable grip.

Justice turned Anders' burning eyes up at Fenris. **"I will not allow you to use us without consequence."**

The spirit's voice rang hollow past the sudden swell of vibration through his tattoos. Fenris dropped to his knees beside the bunk, held up by Justice's hold on his wrist.

 **"This is justice."**

It was power that rang a clear toll through him as though he were a crytal goblet flicked with a fingernail. There was no room for thought or anger or fear, there was no room for anything but the perfect harmonics that turned every bit of lyrium in his body into a conductor.

It raised the fine hairs on his arms, curled his toes, and burst from him in a heated wash of ecstasy that burned away everything but the perfect pleasure.

When his vision cleared he was sprawled on the floor with Anders dangling half in, half out of the bunk, apparently pulled there by the chain between them when Fenris fell.

They blinked dazedly at each other before Anders licked his lips and rasped, "I hate you."

Fenris had to swallow twice before he could manage to weakly retort, "I hate you more."

• • •

They would have to talk about what they had done to each other, and both Fenris and Anders knew it, but neither of them had the strength for the discussion after they cleaned themselves up. They collapsed back into the bunk, and despite Fenris' intention to gather his thoughts and arguments, he was asleep moments after his head hit the pillow.

Caleb woke them hours later, pounding on the door. "Messeres, we're docking now. Captain says you can go any time you please."

"I think that means 'get out,'" Anders muttered, running a hand through his hair. "I'm all for that. Solid ground here we come."

"If there are no templars waiting at the dock it also means 'thank you,'" Fenris said, swinging his legs out of the bunk.

They could banter as though nothing unusual had happened for now, but there would come a time when they would have to talk, and Fenris did not look forward to it.

"Where are we going first?" he asked as they gathered their few belongings.

"To see a friend," Anders said, slinging his staff over his back and opening the door. "She should be able to give us some news about Vigil's Keep that might save us running all over the arling."

They emerged out onto the deck for the last time. "I told you that we are not making this trip to socialize."

"And I am telling you—" Anders stopped what he was saying and plastered on a smile. "Captain Mustow."

The captain offered a cordial smile. "I'll offer you good luck and a good future. You have my word that my men and I will remember what you did for us if anyone asks after you."

"That is—" Fenris paused, looking for the right words. "—good of you. We thank you."

Anders nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Mustow jerked his head toward the gangplank. "Get on with you. You've a new life to start together. Maker be good to you."

Brutal led them off the ship, but fell back at Fenris' side when they stepped onto the dock.

"Looks a lot better than the last time I saw it," Anders said, striding purposefully down the dock. "You'd hardly guess that Dal gave the order to have it razed."

Fenris wondered what Anders saw when he looked around the city. He had heard the story of Amaranthine's fall, but Varric had been the storyteller, which made the tales much less credible. Who had heard of a Gray Warden ordering the destruction of an entire city?

He was no expert at reading Anders, but the anticipation he thought he saw on the man's face accorded poorly with his unwillingness to make the trip.

"Come on then," Anders said, his pace quickening until Fenris wondered when he was going to break into a run. "It isn't far."

"Where isn't far?"

"My friend. Her brother is a warden at Vigil's Keep – or at least he used to be – if he's still there, she'll know if Dal is there too."

Anders practically dragged him through the city gates and down toward a street lined with merchant stalls.

"Here. She'll be here," Anders said, then added under his breath, "I hope she's here."

He stopped in front of a modest home and raised his hand to knock, stopping with his knuckles just above the wood. "What if she isn't here? She has to be here, and he'll be here, but what if he isn't?"

"What are you going on about?" Fenris asked. "Do I have to knock for you?"

Anders quickly shook his head and rapped his knuckles on the wood.

Fenris could see that he was actually holding his breath. Who was this woman? An old lover? Or was that the "he" that Anders was muttering about?

A dark-haired woman opened the door and took a step back when she saw Anders. For a moment, Fenris thought she would close the door in their faces, not that he could fault her; he often felt that way upon seeing Anders.

"Anders," she breathed. "But they told me that you were dead."

"Not yet," Anders said ruefully. "May we come in?"

"Oh, yes." She stood aside to let Anders and Fenris enter, but looked dubiously at Brutal.

"He can stay outside," Anders said quickly. "Can't you, Brutal?"

Brutal whined, but settled on his rump on the ground outside Delilah's door.

"Delilah, this is Fenris. Fenris, this is Delilah. Her brother, Nathaniel Howe is the warden I mentioned."

Fenris nodded to her. "Thank you for seeing us."

Anders shifted and Fenris saw him cast a sidelong glance his way before he asked hopefully, "Is he here? Is he…"

"He's here," she said, finally smiling. She looked as though she was indulging a child. "He's older and fatter, but he's here."

"Can I…?"

"Always, Anders." She gave his arm a friendly pat before exiting through an archway, leaving Fenris and Anders alone in the front room.

Her home was modest, but well-loved, the furniture was worn but looked comfortable, the walls were frescoed with murals of what Fenris assumed was an idealized Fereldan countryside, given the overall lack of mud or dogs.

"Who are you two talking about?" Fenris asked. "Who is this 'he'?"

Anders shrugged for all the world like a child being asked who took the last sweetie, but was spared from answering by Delilah's return.

She held an orange tabby cat cradled in her arms and Anders' face lit up with a simple joy Fenris had never seen nor ever thought to see.

 _"Ser Pounce-a-lot!"_


	12. Chapter 12

Anders held his arms out to Delilah to take Ser Pounce-a-lot from her, feeling a swell of joy in his chest that caught in the hollow of his throat to form a lump that made it nearly impossible to breathe. When Ser Pounce-a-lot pushed off Delilah's chest to leap into his arms, the lump broke, spilling out words he had honestly never thought to say again.

"Ser Pounce-a-lot, who's a good kitty? You're a good kitty, yes you are." He turned his face away from Fenris to wipe his cheeks before continuing. "Look at you, you've gone and grown up. I bet you're the terror of all the mice in Amaranthine."

He was babbling, he knew it, but he realized that he _loved_ this little creature. Ser Pounce-a-lot had never wanted anything from him but simple things – food, affection, a safe place to hide from the darkspawn, and in return Pounce had bumped his head into his hand to show that he approved of the petting, purred by his ear at night when the taint nightmares had made him thrash and cry out, and well, yes, there was something even more special about Pounce—

 _— a memory, fragmented, of waking in the middle of a raging battle to a raspy little tongue on his cheek—_

—but what made Ser Pounce-a-lot special was that he _loved_ Anders back, and now he was in his arms and purring and _shoving_ his head into Anders' hand to be petted, digging his claws into Anders' bare chest as he kneaded the skin under his paws to show his contentment—

—and _Justice_ remembered him. Justice remembered his concern that the creature was imprisoned in a manner that was unjust. Justice remembered watching Anders cooing over the kitten and remembered his inability to understand the relationship between mage and feline. Justice remembered and finally, _finally_ understood.

Anders felt Fenris' eyes on them and turned his back as much as the chain between them would allow. This was a special moment, and he would not tolerate the broody elf ruining it even for an instant.

"I missed you so much," he confessed, stroking his fingers over Pounce's fur, reassuring himself that this was real, and not some dream of longing he would wake from. If nothing else, being tethered to Fenris ensured that this wasn't some pleasant dream. "Kirkwall would be a much better place if you lived there. Do you want to come to Kirkwall, Pounce? There aren't many cats, you'd have all the mice you can eat."

He looked up at Delilah, struck by a thought that pained him as much as a sword thrust. "Unless you're happier here," he said, as much to her as to Pounce. "If you're happier here…." He couldn't bring himself to finish, and Delilah rescued him.

"He missed you, Anders," she said. "He hasn't been this affectionate with anyone since you left him with us. He lets me pick him up, but this— " She indicated the two of them together, "—no. He doesn't act like this with anyone."

 _Good._

Anders felt a grin spread on his lips. "He's a one-man cat. Knows the meaning of loyalty, Ser Pounce-a-lot does. He's a noble creature, my little Orange Warden."

Fenris, of course, broke the spell. "You aren't thinking of bringing it along."

 _It?_

Anders nearly lost his smile, but Pounce seemed to sense his sudden annoyance and butted his head up under Anders' chin.

"Ser Pounce-a-lot is a noble and loyal companion," Anders said slowly, not turning to look at Fenris. "And if he wants to come with me, I am not abandoning him again."

He glanced up at Delilah, who nodded. "I would never keep two friends apart, you know that, Anders. I always told you that he would be here for you if you ever came for him."

Anders chuckled, still petting Pounce. No matter what the future brought, he had this happy moment, and that helped immeasurably. "You got all the best of the Howes," he joked. "How to be kind, how to be generous, how to—"

Delilah cut him off. "How to tell you to save it for my brother. You _are_ going to see Nathaniel, aren't you? You owe him that. He mourned you."

"What, with wailing and gnashing of teeth?" Anders asked defensively. "Did he rend his clothes, too?"

"He mourned you in his own way," Delilah said, her expression so steely it reminded Anders of her brother. "And if you think that I'm not going to tell him that you aren't dead, you're dead wrong."

Anders felt the air start to leak out of his bubble of happiness.

"I'm going to the Vigil," he said. "Is Nathaniel there?"

"Last I heard, he's there," Delilah said. "Though the way you wardens keep your secrets he could be having tea with King Harrowmont in Orzammar for all I know."

"Mm. Is…" Anders looked down at Pounce and let that bit of happiness buoy him. "Is Dal there?"

"If he's not off saving Ferelden again, I imagine he is," Delilah said. "He checks in with me even less often than Nathaniel does."

Anders ignored Fenris clearing his throat and nodded. "Thank you. Will you forgive us if we—?"

"Go?" Her stern expression softened and she came close enough to pet Pounce's back. "Isn't that what your sort are always doing – dropping in with half of a revelation and then disappearing as quickly? Although, if you're off to Vigil's Keep with an elf chained to your wrist—" Both Anders and Fenris stiffened. "—if you wait until tomorrow morning, Albert has a caravan headed that way and you can travel with them. If might be safer for all of you."

"Albert is her husband," Anders explained for Fenris. "That's a generous offer, Delilah."

She folded her arms over her chest. "I'm only doing it for Ser Pounce-a-lot's sake. Traveling with you and your companion won't be easy for the poor dear."

"If only you knew," Fenris growled.

"Thank you," Anders said, ignoring Fenris because that was often the right way to go. "Just tell us where to go and we'll be there in the morning."

• • •

Anders tried to give Fenris a tour of Amaranthine - _And that warehouse is where I thought the templars were storing my phylactery but it was just a trap_ and _Here's where we found the man who killed himself because he thought he was unworthy of his wife and which made me realize that love is a terrible idea_ and _Over there is where we stood when Dal made the decision to put the city to the torch and return to the Vigil._

The best he could offer was "Oh look, that pitchfork is _still_ there." Which, as far as sightseeing tours went, was rather pathetic.

He finally gave up and led Fenris to the rebuilt Crown and Lion.

Both he and Justice remembered The Crown and Lion. He remembered the smuggler's tunnel in the back room and Dal smacking a few so-called blight orphans on the backside with his staff. Justice remembered it as the last roof over Kristoff's head , the last place that his first host had stayed, thinking of his wife and yearning to be home with her. They both remembered another Gray Warden's last thoughts of his wife only to find that she could not even be bothered to be broken up about her husband's death, busy as she was in the arms of her lover in another of The Crown and Lion's rooms.

Even with Ser Pounce-a-lot a comforting weight in his backpack, Anders found The Crown and Lion a disturbing place to stay.

The innkeeper that they remembered was not present, but the bartender was the same red-haired dwarf that they remembered from years before. He did not appear to recognize Anders, but considering that back then he had traveled with someone far more likely to draw the eye, Anders did not find it surprising.

"The back room, the one on the left, the one with the bathtub," he requested of the bartender before the dwarf could offer the room that had been Kristoff's. They couldn't stay in that room. The mere thought made him ache with someone else's pain.

He laid some coin on the counter and added a few extra coppers. "And send someone up with water for the tub now. You don't need to heat it."

The back suite had been rebuilt just as he remembered it – a large bed, a huge bathtub, and a luxurious amount of space after sharing a ship's cabin with Fenris for the past week.

Brutal promptly claimed the couch next to the bed for himself, stretching out to cover the entire piece of furniture with his legs dangling off the end while he basked in the heat from the fireplace. Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped out of Anders' backpack to turn circles in the center of the bed before deciding that Brutal had chosen the best spot. He jumped over the back of the couch to land on the mabari's barrel chest, giving him a few kneads of his paws before settling down to use the nonplussed dog as his mattress. Anders watched until Brutal decided he had been defeated by a cat, then smiled fondly before turning to Fenris.

Fenris beat him to the punch. "What are you thinking bringing a cat along on a trip to Vigil's Keep? With our circumstances we have enough difficulty simply protecting ourselves and you want to add another liability to our journey?"

Anders snorted, remembering Pounce's aplomb in the middle of fireballs and hails of arrows alike. "Don't talk to me about liabilities until you've met Oghren, and _he's_ a warden. Ser Pounce-a-lot will be fine. He was weaned on battles, sharpens his claws on genlocks, cleans his teeth with… you get the idea. He's coming."

Fenris must have read something in his expression that cut the argument right there. Anders wanted to find a mirror to see what the expression was and practice it for future reference. His thoughts on practicing his "shut up, we're doing it my way" expression were interrupted when a young woman and an equally young man trudged in with buckets, dumping them into the tub and disappearing without a look or word for Anders or Fenris.

On the bright side, the interruption reminded him of something much more pleasant that he had planned for the evening.

"I'm having a bath and you aren't going to complain about it. Neither of us smell like Orlesian dandies right now and I'm sick of it."

Fenris eyed the large stone tub until Anders thumped the banner hanging from the ceiling next to the tub. "We don't have to take a bath together and you don't have to worry that I'll be ogling your goodies, if you take a turn in the water too."

Fenris shifted, checking the bottoms of his feet in that way he did when he was either bored or looking for a distraction when he was uncomfortable. "I cannot undress fully," he admitted.

"I know that," Anders said, trying for kind instead of impatient. "But you can get almost everything off, and I'll even hold that last piece of your shirt wossit out of the water for you."

He grinned as the servants returned to dump more water in the tub. "But it was my idea, so I'm going first."


	13. Interlude

Fenris had thought he wanted peace and silence from Anders. He had thought that right up until he got it, and then he wished for the mage's incessant yammering to keep his thoughts from wandering.

The inn room was lit with a faint warm light from the embers still burning in the fireplace. He lay on his side facing the fireplace and the couch on which Brutal dozed, occasionally snoring or whining in his sleep with dreams of darkspawn or perhaps running from orange tabby cats.

Anders was a warm line against his back, lying facing the opposite direction with that _cat_ curled against his chest. When there were lulls in the ambient sounds from the tavern, Fenris could hear it purring.

Of the room's four occupants, Fenris was the only one awake, and all he wanted was to escape to sleep to leave his thoughts behind.

 _Justice_ had done something to him. Since the abomination had clasped his wrist back on the ship and pushed a burst of pleasure through his body, Fenris had been too aware of Anders as something other than a flagrant pain in his backside.

He had… _looked_ when Anders had undressed to bathe. He had caught his imagination wandering to thoughts of what it would be like to be pressed against his naked body when those cracks opened in his skin, to feel the power sweep over him, riding every line of lyrium that had been carved straight into his soul….

Sitting on the other side of the hanging from Anders while he bathed, he had struggled with the unwelcome thoughts and feelings that came when there was down time, time to think, time to dwell, time to _desire._

Time to grow hard in his leathers.

When Anders had emerged from the bath, water running off of him in gleaming rivulets that had traced the lines of muscle in his lean frame. Fenris had been forced to go on the offensive just to keep himself from gawking. There was no chance that he could undress in front of Anders when his cock would spring out, hard, erect, _needy_ as soon as he peeled down his leggings.

 _"I will not bathe in your filth."_

By the time the servants had replaced the bath water, he had regained control of himself, but there was too much awkwardness in the room. Too many things unsaid. Too much lust, and Fenris did not believe he was deluding himself when he thought the lust was not one-sided.

He wanted to believe it was some twisted magic in Xenon's fetters.

He feared to believe that it was not.

He lay next to Anders in the dim firelight and he _wanted_ to touch him.

He wanted to pin Anders down and punish him for these thoughts. He wanted to let his rage and lust course through the lyrium in his skin and through the chain between them until Anders writhed, begged, _screamed_. He wanted the pleasure to overwhelm the man until it crossed the threshold into too much, no more, please Fenris, please, _mercy!_

He wanted Justice to punish him in turn. He wanted that iron grip and the molten pleasure. He wanted every nerve to throb, he wanted to feel it burn his way through him, the antithesis of the pain that had burned away his memory, he wanted…

…he wanted…

He just _wanted._ The specifics were almost incidental to the craving.

Anders stirred behind him, bare skin to bare skin, both of them wearing light pants to sleep in because they both refused to sleep nude in their situation, half of Fenris' leather shirt laid on top of the blankets still strung on the chain.

He could roll over, twist the chain, trap Anders between it and…

…and be something he was not with someone he only wanted because of some trick of magic. Again and again magic perverted everything in his life.

He clenched his jaw tight and shifted away from Anders to roll onto his back, his eyes on the lazily shifting shadows in the canopy above the bed they shared.

"Mage," he said in a barely audible whisper.

No response, no change in Anders' breathing.

"Anders," he said, a little more loudly. Surely Anders would hear him if he were awake.

Nothing.

Only then did he let his unchained hand slide down the flat planes of his abdomen, dipping in under the waistband of his pants, pushing them low on his hips, tracing the length of his cock with his fingertips, slipping lower to cup his balls, squeezing just enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

 _—Anders' hands would be softer—_

He brushed his thumb over the base of his shaft, feeling the slight texture difference where the finest line of lyrium on his body defined the center line of his shaft.

 _—his tongue would trace the lyrium, licking away the substance of magic—_

He kept his eyes open, fearing that if he closed them, he would see Anders behind his closed eyelids, his skin crackling with a blue fire to match the lyrium glow on Fenris' skin.

He gripped himself, fingers sliding along the length of his erection, thumb teasing along the top of his foreskin, easing it back, pushing it forward in a slow glide of flesh on flesh.

 _—he would be tight, clenched around his cock, writhing when Fenris pulsed his hips and the lyrium power in time—_

He felt the pleasure build, draw tight in his balls, in his abdomen, wrapping his spine tight, tighter, t— his breath caught, his body trembling with the effort or not thrusting up off the bed into his hand as he spilled hot over his fingers and onto his abdomen.

He already knew it wasn't enough.

Anders stayed silent, still sleeping, but the bed moved. When Fenris let his gaze shift to his left, he saw Ser Pounce-a-lot, fur burnished in the warm firelight, staring at him over Anders' shoulder.


	14. Chapter 14

Anders had been subdued for the entire trip from Amaranthine, which suited Fenris perfectly. Anders barely spoke to Fenris, but occasionally spoke to the cat, which traveled perched on his backpack most of the time. Perched on the backpack and staring at Fenris most of the time.

Fenris did not like that cat with its knowing gaze.

They left Albert's caravan to unload its deliveries outside the gates to Vigil's Keep, walking together into the outer courtyard.

The walls of Vigil's Keep bore scars in testament to its endurance, the sturdy granite marked by siege engines, the gates obviously newer construction after the breach Varric had once described in one of his third- or fourth-hand tales of the Hero of Ferelden's adventures. Anders had left when Varric told the story of the siege of Vigil's Keep, not giving the tale the stamp of legitimacy it might have had from someone who had actually lived the experience.

"Is that… Maker, by my soul it is! Anders!" A red-haired man in the keep's distinctive silverite armor strode across the cobbles, his face breaking into a broad smile. "And is that Ser Pounce-a-lot? They told me you were dead, but I guess you never can tell with a Gray Warden."

"Alec." Anders looked as though he was trying to fake happiness past rising nausea. "You've grown up."

"I've done my best to make the Warden Commander glad of his mercy," Alec said, his smile shutting down in the face of Anders' false cheer. Fenris saw when his gaze fell to the cloth-wrapped chain that hung between them, and he was certain that the man saw through the ruse.

"I should take you to see him," he said, still eying the chain.

"Wait," Anders said. "Widald is here?"

Alec nodded.

"Any of the old guard? Nathaniel, Velanna, Sigrun?" He made a face. "Oghren?"

"Velanna and Sigrun are away, but due to return any time. You can still follow the smell to find Oghren. Nathaniel recently returned and should be in residence."

Anders forced his flagging smile back up to full brightness. "Then lead on. I'm sure the Warden Commander will be very excited to see me."

Alec led them through the courtyard, past a well-equipped forge where a bald man was bickering quite loudly with a rather put-upon looking shopkeeper.

"They're still at it," Anders observed, jerking a thumb toward the two men.

Alec followed the gesture and nodded. "They never stop. One day the iron isn't good enough, the next he's whinging about how no one ever brings him anything interesting."

Anders shook his head. "It's almost like I never left."

"But you did, and now you're back with a… friend." Alec said while he led them past a statue of Andraste.

"Fenris," Anders said. "His name is Fenris."

"Fenris," Alec repeated, as though to commit the name to memory while he led them up a set of stairs under a raised portcullis. The keep might not be under threat at this time, but Fenris could see that its inhabitants would be ready for immediate response if that changed.

"Vigil's Keep throne room," Anders told Fenris as they emerged into a great hall with a huge fire pit in its center. Its walls were lined with trophies and inset bookshelves that reached well above Fenris' head, a mix of militaristic and scholarly.

"I can't tell you how much time I used to spend in here." He raised his head and sniffed the air before turning his head to the left. "And there he is, in his favorite spot in the keep, by the ale cask."

The "he" that Anders referenced was a red-haired dwarf in heavy plate armor who was staring, slack-jawed at Anders, a tankard raised halfway to his lips.

"You. Mage," the dwarf said, pushing the tankard out in front of him to point at Anders.

"Me mage, you foul," Anders confirmed wearily, turning his head to Fenris to say, "This is Oghren. He rarely bathes, is even less often sober, and isn't too bad to have at your back in a dustup with darkspawn."

"Thought you were dead. Who's the elf?" Oghren asked. "New boyfriend?"

"No," Fenris said in a tone that should have shut that line of questioning down immediately.

"Which one of you is the girl?" Oghren persisted. "I can't tell. He wears the skirt, so you'd think he'd be the one taking it, but elves are all so—"

"Oghren," Anders interrupted. "How's Felsi?"

"Felsi?" Suddenly Oghren looked mildly panicked and Fenris noted that one of his hands shifted to protect his groin. "Where?"

"That good," Anders observed.

It was like watching everyone around him speak in another language of shared history and old jokes or old rivalries, or perhaps both. If Fenris were not well-accustomed to feeling an outsider, it might have made him feel a pang at his exclusion from this sharing.

Oghren seemed to conclude that this Felsi person wasn't coming to unman him and began to dig under his armor, loosening a buckle and releasing a waft of odor that crossed the room to assault Fenris' sense of smell. It reminded him of the stink of the Hanged Man the morning after a particularly debauched night, mixed with dried blood, and just a soupçon of a reek he had always associated with the Deep Roads.

It made him not want to get any nearer to Oghren than he had to.

Anders must have noticed Fenris' expression because he smirked over at him. "I'd tell you that you get used to it, but you never really do, and just when you think you might, he'll fart, or belch, or both."

Oghren interrupted them with a triumphant, "Here it is!" producing a crumpled sheet of parchment from somewhere Fenris did not want to even begin to picture.

He smoothed it out on his chestplate and held it out for Anders to take from him. It was permeated with Oghren's particular reek, but Fenris could see that it was covered in a child's scrawl and a drawing of something that, if Fenris squinted just right, looked as though it was either Oghren having carnal relations with a griffin, or more likely, a child's take on what riding a griffin might look like.

"The nugget sent that last month," Oghren announced proudly. "Right after she got the axe I sent her."

"Isn't she about four years old?" Anders asked dubiously. "Doesn't that seem a bit young to be giving a child an axe?"

"Almost five," Oghren confirmed. "That's not too young. If I'd had my way she'd have had an axe to cut her teeth on. Just because her dad's been kicked out of the warrior caste doesn't mean she can't learn the old ways."

Anders raised his hands in surrender. "Felsi seems like a woman with her head screwed on right. Other than ever getting naked with you—"

"Hey!" Oghren protested. "We didn't always get naked. Sometimes there were costumes."

"I… did not need to know that," Anders said slowly.

"Mage," Fenris said in a low growl. "You may enjoy your Gray Warden reunion after we are separated. We have other business now."

Anders passed the page back to Oghren, who, for all his filth and crude behavior, smoothed it carefully one last time before tucking it away under his armor again.

"Here to see the Warden Commander, I reckon," he said while he fiddled with his straps, getting everything situated just right.

"That's right," Anders said. He pointed to Alec, who had watched the reunion without interrupting. "Alec is taking us to him now."

Oghren leered. "Just go on in. I bet he's just waiting for company."

He belched and leaned back against the cask behind him, apparently dismissing them as he dove back into his tankard.

"He should be in his office," Alec said, leading them to the back of the hall and upstairs to a corridor lined with closed doors.

"I know the way," Anders told Alec. "You don't have to wait around if you have other things to do."

"I should—" Alec began.

"We came all the way from Kirkwall," Anders said before Alec could finish his protest. "I think this reunion should be private. You know us Gray Wardens and our secrets."

Alec flicked his eyes down to the chain again before he shrugged. "I'll wait here."

Anders nodded. "Thanks, but if it lasts more than ten minutes, you can probably go back to whatever you were doing."

Alec settled against the wall and folded his arms, while Anders led Fenris to the last door at the end of the hall. Fenris could hear muffled voices through the closed door, but the wood was thick enough that he could not make sense of the conversation.

Anders stopped at the door and took a deep breath before rapping his knuckles on the wood.

The conversation ceased before he heard a raised voice call, "Come in."

Anders drew another deep breath, lowered his head as though saying a quick prayer – although Fenris doubted that – and pushed the door open.

Opening the door revealed a desk and a man seated behind it, but neither the office nor the man occupying it met Fenris' expectations at all.

The office was small, cramped, and messy. The desk was stacked with stray bits of armor, leather packets, bits of bone, small boxes – and even… was that a pair of torn trousers? – as though they were looking into a storage closet instead of the Warden Commander and Hero of Ferelden's office. Even the walls, lined with shelves as they were, were untidily packed with bits and bobs, doodads and things Fenris could never imagine would be useful to the leader of the Gray Wardens for an entire arling, let alone a man who had stopped a blight and had most of Thedas looking up to him.

Which led to the man behind the desk, mostly hidden by the piles of _stuff_.

Fenris had somehow expected a man who had at least a passing resemblance to Garrett Hawke or at least to Leandra Amell. Widald Amell did not meet his expectations in any respect.

Fenris could not determine if he was tall or short at first glance, given that he was seated behind the desk, but he was dark-skinned. Not dark-skinned as perhaps Hawke might be if he spent more time in the sun than traipsing through Darktown, Sundermount tunnels, and Wounded Coast caves, but dark-skinned as a man who had been born with coloring the rich brown of a chestnut freshly emerged from its burr. His eyes were an even darker brown than his skin, and his black hair, neatly braided against his scalp, had the rows of braids collected into a tidy ponytail at the back of his head. His features were broader by far than Hawke's and perfectly suited his wider face.

In short, he looked nothing like Garrett Hawke, unless somehow being devastatingly handsome was the only family trait that carried across the Amell lines.

"Warden Commander," Anders said tentatively.

Widald Amell's expression underwent a startling series of changes, flickering through disconcertion, delight, anger, and sorrow before settling into neutral calculation as he rose from his seat behind the desk.

"Anders."


	15. Chapter 15

Anders had a sudden vision of almost hallucinatory clarity – he was bolting, dragging Fenris behind him all the way out of the keep, robes flying out like wings. They could run and they could find some other way out of these chains. They didn't _really_ need four hands between them, did they? That was just greedy.

Justice shut down that train of thought. Killjoy. He wanted to see Dal whether Anders did or not.

There was Dal, picking up his staff from where it leaned against his desk and coming around to face him directly.

Oh Maker, he was going to die.

Ser Pounce-a-lot did not seem to share his fear. He jumped down from his perch on Anders' backpack and situated himself directly on Dal's feet.

"Anders," Dal said so mildly that Anders could almost forget how implacable he actually was behind that mask of calm and patience, "where have you been? And by any chance do you know where Justice is?"

Anders forced himself to meet Dal's eyes. "Ah, yes… that's… a bit…"

"Complicated?" Dal supplied for him, one eyebrow raising ever so slightly.

Fenris made an exasperated noise. "It isn't complicated. He is the demon's new host."

 _"Spirit,"_ Anders and Dal said together.

Dal continued, giving Fenris a look that brooked no disagreement. "Justice is a Fade spirit."

"That spirit is possessing him," Fenris said, not flinching. "Whatever you wish to call it."

"Anders…?"

Anders, unlike Fenris, flinched.

"It's true," he said at last. "Justice and I are together now."

Dal's attention sharpened to the point that Anders felt as though he should be bleeding. "You and Justice," he said slowly. "I must have misjudged you both. There's a reason I stopped letting Justice and Nathaniel patrol together, and here you went and did it instead."

Anders felt his surprise amplified by Justice's surprise. "Justice and Nathaniel? But he's—"

"Dedicated, direct, humorless?" Dal said. "They might have made a deadly match don't you think?"

He planted his staff on the ground in front of his feet where Ser Pounce-a-lot was blithely rolling around on his back, still ignored by the men in the room.

"Should I take it that whatever you and Justice did together is what caused the carnage that the wardens found after you disappeared?"

This would be the time when he would be smote. Smited? Smitten? Smiting was about to happen.

"You let them set a templar on me!" Anders accused, deciding that if smiting was coming, he would go down fighting. "You just left us all to go off without a word and they immediately shoved a templar straight up my arse! Does it matter that I followed you to the Fade and back? Fought not just a high dragon but an _undead_ high dragon by your side? That I was right there with you to fight the Mother? That I didn't step a bloody toe out of line from the moment I took my Joining until you up and disappeared?"

He could feel his rage rising and he let it come because he was so damned scared by this confrontation that it was easier to roll with the rage than let the fear pull him under.

"Do you know what I have to say for the Gray bloody Wardens? To the Void with them! I was ready to die for them in exchange for my freedom from the Circle and what did I get?"

He jabbed an accusatory finger at Dal. "A templar 'partner' who acted like I was pissing straight blood magic!" His voice was growing louder, his heart beating faster, his blood was pounding in his ears, and the last, most damning pronouncement took the entire room by surprise: "And they made me give up Ser Pounce-a-lot!"

He looked down at the orange cat still rolling around on Dal's feet and felt the rage pour out of him in a rush that left him just tired. "Bastards."

"My, my," came a smooth voice that tore Anders' attention away from Ser Pounce-a-lot to find an elf leaning insouciantly in a now-open doorway in the office's back right wall. He wore a matched longsword and dagger on his back and an air that he knew how to use them. His almost shoulder-length blond hair was held away from his tattooed face by pair of braids.

"You never told me the mage was so fiery," he went on, his words laced with an unmistakably Antivan accent. "You know how I like fiery mages."

Dal huffed and shot a look over his shoulder at the elf. "Zevran, how can I maintain a proper degree of righteous disapproval if you go flirting with my warden? I told you to stay out of sight and just listen in."

Wait. What? _My warden?_

Did that mean that smiting was not forthcoming?

"You have also neglected to ask who the fiery mage is chained to, my dear warden, and why they are in such a position," Zevran went on. "Unless you also failed to mention certain, shall we say, proclivities of his? In which case I must say bravo, ser, bravo."

Dal glared at Zevran, who held up his hands, grinning unapologetically. "I am sorry, do not let me interrupt your righteous disapproval, it is so very sexy. You may use it on me later and I promise that I shall be thoroughly chastised."

Fenris stirred beside him. He should have known it would have been too easy if Fenris had actually kept his mouth shut through all of this. "My name is Fenris, and I am unwillingly chained to him through a magical accident. We have sought other help to no avail. The mage says that the Warden Commander might help find a way to separate us. You are our last resort."

Anders shot him a look. "Tactful."

"And blaming him for your choices was better?" Fenris retorted. "A green templar recruit can resist possession under torture and you just hand yourself over to this 'spirit' of yours."

"I wasn't blaming him, I was explaining," Anders snapped. "I didn't just wake up one morning to find that Rolan had spat in my porridge and decide that being a host for a Fade spirit was a viable life choice. I haven't even gotten to the part about the injustices the rest of the mages who aren't the Hero of Ferelden have to endure."

"Enough." Dal didn't raise his voice, but he laced it with enough magic that Fenris involuntarily reacted, his tattoos flaring under the touch of magic. Ser Pounce-a-lot reacted as well, swiping his claws over Dal's ankle before he swarmed up Anders' robe to settle on his backpack, glaring reproachfully over Anders' shoulder at him.

Anders should have noticed the fact that Ser Pounce-a-lot had left bleeding gouges in his flesh, clawing his thigh, hip, bare chest, and shoulder on his way up to his perch, but Fenris' unexpected loss of control had him swaying on his feet, struggling not to lose control in a more embarrassing manner.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard," he chanted, squeezing his eyes closed and clenching his hands into fists.

He dimly heard Zevran ask, "Is that his O-face? It is rather fetching, no?"

 _"Bastard."_

"Right," Dal said crisply. "Through there."

He felt Fenris take his right arm and Dal take his left. Together they maneuvered him around the desk and through the door where Zevran had been lounging.

He knew before he even opened his eyes that they were in Dal's private office. He had spent many hours in this room with Dal either alone or with some of his closest warden companions, making plans for the next mission or sharing stories and drinks. The front office was for official business, for building a reputation that left people confused about who the Warden Commander was, for – as Dal had once said – armor.

His private office was less cluttered and more comfortable, with a second desk, several chairs, and a long couch that Dal and Fenris settled him on after removing his backpack. Ser Pounce-a-lot draped himself over Anders' lap, purring loudly and kneading his paws into Anders' thigh.

"What's wrong with him?" Dal asked once they had him settled. "I've seen him stand up to more than a little bit of force magic without so much as flinching. Is it something to do with Justice?"

"He is right here," Anders said, dabbing at the bleeding scratches on his bare pectoral, ignoring Fenris when he jerked back against the chain's pull between them from the motion. At least this time he had known what the sensation was when it hit him, and it had not been as strong as what Fenris had done on the ship. Despite that, he was rather grateful for Ser Pounce-a-lot on his lap, keeping him from tenting his robe, but at least he wasn't going to need a sudden cleanup.

"He's right here," he repeated, trying to gather his thoughts. "And sort of desperate if you haven't guessed."

Dal settled a hip on his desk – this one was mostly clear other than a blotter and quill and ink. There were books stacked in piles on the floor next to his desk, but at least the desk itself was clear in contrast to the mess in the front office. Zevran dropped into Dal's chair and propped his feet up on the blotter, looking for all the world as though they were guests in _his_ office.

"You've left me with too many questions to ask at once," Dal said once Anders looked up at him. "So we're going to start with what's important to me before we think about what's important to you. Can I speak to Justice?"

Anders shook his head. "Not exactly. Mostly he and I are one."

"Mostly," Dal said. "Mostly doesn't mean completely."

Anders ducked his head. "It's complicated."

"You said that already." Dal leaned his staff against the desk and folded his arms across his chest. "You came to me, you want my help, so stop trying to tell me that it's complicated and just answer the questions."

"He has folded his arms," Zevran observed. "Do you know what comes after the folding of the arms, my friends? Surely you do not wish to try my beloved warden's patience enough to find out. It is a terrible, terrible thing."

It might have served as a better warning if Zevran did not sound so deeply amused.

Dal frowned. "Zevran."

"I shall be as quiet as the Chantry mouse now, yes?"

"Yes."

Anders watched this byplay, and in another time and place, it would have been amusing, even endearing. He had heard tales of the assassin that Dal had spared only to fall in love with, and Dal had been devoted even when he and Zevran were separated. Certainly Anders' flirtations and those of others Anders had seen had all been kindly but firmly rebuffed.

With Zevran settled, Dal's attention on him was sharp enough to cut. "I want to speak to Justice."

"You can't," Anders said. "Or rather you can, but he can't answer you. Not right now. Not unless you want to see Fenris on the floor. That glowing thing goes both ways through the chain and I'll light up like he does if Justice comes out."

It wasn't a lack of desire from Justice to speak with their old friend. In fact, seeing Dal stirred Justice to a level of separate consciousness that was rare when they were relatively calm. But neither Anders nor Justice wanted to see Fenris writhing for an audience when he had done nothing to deserve it.

"You'll have to help us get this chain off if you want Justice to answer you back." He felt like a manipulative ass saying it, but it served a dual purpose. "Ask Fenris if I'm lying. He hates me, so he'll be happy to tell you if anything I say is untrue."

Dal and Zevran's attention shifted to Fenris, who nodded. "He does not lie. The only times I have seen this Justice, it comes with a glowing manifestation that has… side effects because of the chain."

Zevran chuckled, which likely violated his promise to be as quiet as a Chantry mouse, but at least he said nothing.

"Ask him what his tattoos are made with," Anders said.

Dal looked expectantly at Fenris who said, "Lyrium. The tattoos are lyrium."

Zevran let out a long, low whistle, but Dal reacted the way Anders expected. He remembered. Of course he remembered.

"Whatever happened to the ring I gave Justice?" he asked, confirming Anders' expectation.

"We—I had to sell it. Rolan brought templars after me after Justice and I joined. I had to run. Maybe if you—"

"Don't." Dal cut him off. "Just don't, Anders. I give second chances, but only to people who take responsibility for their choices."

Behind him Zevran spread out his hands as though to indicate that he was a lucky beneficiary of Dal's second chances.

Anders felt Justice acknowledge the truth, the rightness of what Dal was saying, but that didn't mean that Anders did not hate him for it, just a little. He knew Dal gave second chances, as though Alec and Zevran were not illustrations enough. As though Widald Amell had not given a strange apostate a first chance upon their first meeting when Anders had been surrounded by templar bodies, and a second chance when he could have handed Anders over to the templar who had accompanied King Alistair.

He could try to blame Dal for not being there, but Dal had never promised to be his nursemaid, forever protecting him from the Gray Wardens, or from himself.

"We made our choice," he said. "My friend wanted to give Aura a body to bury, I wanted to give my friend a place in this world, and my friend wanted to give me… everything. I would never be alone, never lack direction, never wonder what the point of being a mage was in a world where most everyone thinks we're barely a step above demons ourselves. That's what we did, and it wasn't your fault, it was our choice."

Dal was silent for so long that Anders had to fight not to squirm under the man's scrutiny. Beside him, Fenris was likewise silent, and Anders wondered what he thought of all this – the Hero of Ferelden, his elf lover, the stories, the setting, the man himself.

He had not told Fenris what Dal looked like because he had wanted to see his reaction when his expectations were thrown for a loop, and that much would have been gratifying if this entire scene weren't so fraught with other, more pressing concerns.

Finally Dal stirred himself from his considerations. "Let's have a look at this chain, since it stands between me and having a word with Justice, and you can tell me what you've been doing since you ran."

He unfolded his arms and pushed away from the desk. "Zevran, go find Nathaniel and bring him here. I'm sure he'll want to talk to Anders, and I could use his and your opinions on this chain."


	16. Chapter 16

Once Zevran left the room, Dal approached Anders and Fenris and knelt by the couch, lifting the cloth-wrapped chain in his hands as though to test its weight.

Ser Pounce-a-lot rose from his place on Anders' lap, bumped his head against Dal's hand, and jumped off the couch to wander the office, crawling under furniture, poking his head out with dust on his whiskers, and pausing to sharpen his claws on the office rug. At least someone seemed comfortable.

This close, Fenris thought he could feel the air faintly hum around Widald Amell the way he remembered from the most powerful magisters. Most people likely only noticed it subliminally, but Fenris felt it along the lyrium carved in his flesh like an itch.

Without asking, Dal produced a knife from his belt and slit open the cloth that had been sewn around the chain back in Kirkwall. A glance at Anders showed him watching his former commander with a shuttered, tense expression.

"Warn us if you will touch it with magic," Fenris said. He had meant to tell Dal not to use magic at all, but somehow telling this man not to do something seemed unlikely to yield results.

"Just looking," Dal said, tearing the seams until he could pull the cloth free and drop it on the floor. They had been wearing it non-stop for over a week and a half, it was little surprise that it had started to get a bit stiff with dirt, even with the bath they had taken back in Amaranthine. "Did this thing fool anyone?"

Fenris and Anders shared a look over Dal's head. "Almost too well," Anders said.

Dal hummed noncommittally and pulled Anders' wrist closer to examine the runes on the cuff. "What did you two try before deciding to come to me?"

"A skilled picklock, a smith, a dwarven alchemist, a Dalish mage, and a Circle mage who specialized in metallurgy," Fenris said. "Anders has some papers from the Circle mage that you should see."

Fenris knew Anders well enough to see that his whole body was fairly vibrating with tension – nothing had been resolved between him and the Warden Commander. Fenris found it only fitting for all the times that Anders had been filled with his blind self-righteousness that he would be brought to this state by facing his own past.

"Tell me about yourself, Fenris," Dal said while he passed the chain link by link through his hands, examining each one intently for some flaw or difference from the others. "How do you know Anders?"

"We have a mutual acquaintance," Fenris said after a moment's consideration of how to describe Hawke. "A man to whom I owe a debt." That was too cold even for him. "A friend."

"It's a small world," Anders said. "His name is Garrett Hawke." Dal did not react. "His mother's name is Leandra Amell."

Dal looked up from his examination of the chain to pin him with a steely stare. "Amell?"

Anders' lips stretched in an approximation of a smile. "I should have remembered that you had mentioned you had family in Kirkwall. I went where I heard mages were treated worst in Thedas and ended up with a bloody Amell coming into my clinic looking for a Gray Warden."

Dal appeared nonplussed for the first time. "Is he a mage?"

Anders shook his head. "His sister is, and she's in Kirkwall's Circle, the Gallows. It makes Kinloch Hold seem like a non-stop celebration of freedom and happiness. They don't even bother to pretend what the Circle is there – they house mages in an old _prison,_ Dal. The stories of templar abuses that come out to me are horrifying. Your cousin is in there and she was an apostate for most of her life."

He leaned forward in his seat. "Just imagine the fear she lives under simply for being raised a free woman."

Fenris tried to read the expression on Dal's face – perplexity? Irritation? It was too complicated, and he did not know the man well enough to decipher his feelings.

"I do what I can, Anders." Dal picked up the chain again and resumed his examinations. "She will have to do what she can. Perhaps there will come a time when I will hear more tales of the Hero of the Free Marches than of the Hero of Ferelden. What's Garrett Hawke's sister's name?"

Fenris answered before Anders. "Bethany. She's a good woman, a strong woman, she—"

They were interrupted by Zevran's return. "There is a strange mabari in the courtyard," he informed them as a tall human man loomed behind him, staring over Zevran's head at Anders. "Walter has found him. They appear to be, shall we say, _negotiating_ over who has the right to piss on the statue of Andraste."

"Brutal," Fenris said. "He is Hawke's mabari. He sent him with us because he could not come himself."

Dal was already on his feet. "I'll get Walter in line. You two," he indicated Zevran and the newcomer who had to be Nathaniel, "I want your opinions on the chain by the time I get back."

Zevran stood aside just enough for Dal to squeeze past him out of the office. Fenris shifted his attention to Nathaniel, not wanting to see the kiss Dal brushed against Zevran's cheek or the entirely unsubtle grope Zevran gave him in return. Seeing a legend be so… earthy rather ruined the effect.

"Fereldans and dogs," Zevran said with mock despair, moving into the office to do as Dal had directed. "You would think that…." He looked back to where Nathaniel still stood, eyes fixed on Anders and trailed off. "Did I neglect to tell you why the Warden Commander wanted to see you?" he asked the man quite disingenuously. "I must have forgotten."

"You," Nathaniel said. "They told me you were dead."

Anders dropped his eyes to Zevran, who knelt between them and murmured "May I?" to Fenris before picking up his wrist to examine the cuff.

"They were wrong."

"I see that," Nathaniel said, his tone chilly. "I should have known you would run again. It's what you are best at."

Anders made a frustrated noise. "I ran because—"

"Because why?" Nathaniel demanded.

"Because I'm the one who killed Rolan, the templars he brought, and everyone else at the camp," Anders admitted, slumping. "Or Justice and I, but there's not much distinction anymore."

Zevran whistled without looking up from Fenris' cuff.

Fenris didn't take his eyes off Nathaniel. His reaction was too complex to fully follow. Fenris identified disbelief, anger, perhaps betrayal, more anger – it seemed a familiar emotion for the man – a clench in his expression that looked like mourning, and finally his features settled back into hard lines that gave away little beyond the fact that the man was not pleased.

"You and Justice," he finally said, slowly, tasting the words for some truth to them. "He went to you."

Fenris remembered what Dal had said about no longer allowing Nathaniel and Justice to patrol together.

"Yes," Anders said, sounding tired. "I'd have him say hello but that gets a bit…"

"Complicated?" Zevran supplied cheerfully, releasing Fenris' wrist with a murmured, "Thank you," before taking Anders' wrist.

"I'm certain Anders can flounder on his own," Fenris said, drawing Nathaniel's attention for the first time.

"Who are you?" he asked without a trace of friendliness.

"Fenris."

"Why are you chained to Anders?"

Fenris cut his eyes over to Anders who said, "A crazy magic store owner didn't plan past 'don't touch the glaaaaaaass.'" He drew the last words out in mimicry of Xenon's bizarre drawl.

"And you touched it?"

Anders dropped his eyes back down to Zevran's head and gave a small nod. "We both did, but it's not our fault, Xenon should never have put that staff—"

"Sword," Fenris interrupted.

 _"—thing,"_ Anders continued with a glare for Fenris, "out where people would be drawn to it. Might as well have asked Oghren not to touch the glass when there was a bottle of dwarven rotgut inside."

"Then at least you two aren't escaped apostates bringing templars down on us," Nathaniel said. "We had enough of those around after Anders 'died'."

Nathaniel's expression tightened still more before he said, "I want to talk to Justice."

"He's here," Anders said. "But he can't answer you right now. It would be—"

Zevran was positively gleeful as he supplied, "Complicated."

Fenris frowned down at him. "Are you always like this?"

Zevran chuckled. "Oh no, my friend, sometimes I am much, much worse, but you would like it."

Nathaniel sounded resigned. "Take his word for being much worse."

"But would you say that he would like it?" Zevran asked, turning to wink at Nathaniel, who only shook his head.

Fenris huffed in exasperation. "It was already explained for the Warden Commander, but there are side effects of this chain that make allowing Justice to manifest…" Zevran opened his mouth and Fenris hurried to finish before he could make another contribution to the conversation, "…undesirable."

"But Justice is here," Nathaniel said. "Right?"

Anders nodded.

"Is he happy?"

Anders turned his head away. Fenris had never considered asking whether the thing that possessed the mage was happy. He had also never known it as a friend the way Nathaniel and Dal had. In point of fact, he had never considered that a thing like that could be considered a friend.

"He has moments, but you can't blame me for that," Anders finally said. "He wasn't often happy in Kristoff's body either."

"Are you happy?" Nathaniel asked.

Zevran's hands stilled on Anders' cuff. Fenris waited for the inevitable rash of complaints.

"What do you want me to say?" Anders asked. "Justice has helped me find some purpose other than planning my next escape from the Circle. I help people. It's enough."

"You had a purpose," Nathaniel retorted. "Being a Gray Warden."

"I would have," Anders snapped. "If I weren't constantly treated like a greater danger than the darkspawn. It's _templars_ who drive good mages to desperate acts. I've lived it, and I've seen it over and over in Kirkwall."

"Is that where you've been?" Nathaniel asked? "Kirkwall? Anders, that's…."

"That's what?" Anders asked.

"Warden business," Nathaniel said. "And there are non-wardens here."

"I could leave," Zevran offered. "But I see no way to separate our handsome elf from your friend. Our _other_ handsome elf, that is. _I_ am strong enough to resist his bare-chested charms."

"That's a good thing," Dal said, coming out from behind Nathaniel, leaving Fenris to wonder how long he had been listening to the conversation.

"Nathaniel," he said, taking charge of the situation again. "You haven't looked at the manacle yet."

"He is unlikely to find anything I have not," Zevran said, releasing Anders and stepping away. "No offense, my friend, I am not impugning your skills, but there is no physical locking mechanism."

"Nathaniel?" Dal asked.

"If Zevran says it and it is unrelated to his sexual exploits, it is probably true," Nathaniel said.

"If it is related to my sexual exploits it is definitely true," Zevran protested. "I could challenge you to a duel for that. A sexy duel if my warden would allow it."

"He would not," Dal said firmly, taking Zevran by the bicep to guide him back to the desk. "As you well know."

"Were there any problems with the mabari?" Fenris asked, trying to get the conversation back on track to something less frivolous. "Hawke would want to see him returned intact."

"They're fine," Dal assured him. "I have some extra bones I usually keep for Walter. I gave Walter an ox bone and gave – Brutal is it?" Fenris nodded. "I gave Brutal a lamb bone and the two of them are gnawing like old friends."

Zevran settled back in Dal's chair and Dal rested his hip on the desk again. "Do you want to stay?" he asked Nathaniel, who nodded. "Then sit."

"Anders, you have some papers for me?"


	17. Chapter 17

The office settled into a tense hush while Dal read the papers Anders had brought from Kirkwall. Zevran lounged behind Dal's desk, Nathaniel sat in a cloud of grim silence that merged with the one radiating off of Fenris, and Ser Pounce-a-lot had deserted Anders to wander Dal's office, cadging petting from Zevran and Dal. He tried getting some attention from Nathaniel, but butting his head against the man's leg did no good, and when he jumped up on the arm of the chair, Nathaniel carefully picked him up and put him back down on the floor.

Anders was glad that Nathaniel was gentle with Ser Pounce-a-lot, but at the same time, if he had been less respectful, he could have picked a fight. It would have set fire to the tension that was settling around them like a volatile gas and maybe burned some of it off before the real explosion came. He could feel the explosion coming and his choices seemed to be to cause it or to run. He slid a glance over to Fenris, who sat stoically, watching Dal as he read, and silently cursed the elf for his role as the anchor keeping him from the latter option.

Justice roiled inside his head, wanting to push forward to speak with his friends, constrained by his belief that it would be wrong to force Fenris to endure the consequences just for the sake of a conversation. He wanted to tell them that if they must be angry, they could not blame only Anders; he was equally responsible for all that had happened.

Anders half-smiled, knowing Justice would feel his appreciation for that.

"This amuses you, does it?" Nathaniel asked.

Beside him, Anders felt Fenris tense at the sudden break in the silence.

"No." Anders scrubbed a hand over the shaggier than usual bristles on his face and shook his head. "No, and explaining wouldn't make any sense."

"Try me," Nathaniel challenged.

Dal glanced up from the papers before looking over his shoulder at Zevran, who shrugged expansively. Dal nodded as though that had answered something for him and went back to reading.

"You wouldn't like it. You'd probably say I was lying," Anders said tiredly. "It isn't important anyway."

Nathaniel sighed. "You are just as impossible to talk to as ever."

"It's a skill, and this is stupid," Anders said, standing up before addressing Dal. "You don't need me here while you read. I can go for a walk."

Mildly, without looking up from the papers again, Dal said, "If Fenris wants to go for a walk, then yes, you can go, and Nathaniel will escort you."

Anders sat back down again with a heavy thump.

"No, go." Dal slapped the stack of papers lightly against his knee. "I'll be at this for hours. You remember where the mess hall is. Go get something to eat, show Fenris around. Ser Pounce-a-lot can stay here or you can take him down to get reacquainted with Walter."

Ser Pounce-a-lot poked his head out from under Nathaniel's chair at mention of his name and meowed before pulling his head back out of sight.

Dal chuckled. "He can stay. Maybe he can find the mouse that keeps gnawing on my books."

"Walter hasn't eaten it?" Anders asked, standing up and smoothing out his robe while Fenris unwillingly rose and Nathaniel pushed himself out of his chair.

"Not yet." Dal shrugged, and it was almost, _almost_ like old times. "Darkspawn he can manage, but give him a mouse and he's hopeless."

"That's why you need cats." Anders forced a smile. "Let him stay then. You're sort of like his grandfather anyway."

Zevran chuckled. "My dear Widald a grandfather?"

"You know I hate when you call me Widald."

"But of course," Zevran replied, eyes twinkling, "why else would I call you that when we are about to have an empty office in which you may chastise me?"

Anders and Fenris shared a look. "Please save the chastisement for later," Anders said, letting a note of pleading enter his voice. "The sooner Fenris and I are separated the better."

"But he is such a handsome elf," Zevran said. "You could have such fun with that chain. Why once I played such a game with two Orlesian courtesans and—"

"No," Fenris snapped. "I have spent too long chained to the mage. It is only my loyalty to Hawke that sees him standing before you with both hands."

"See!" Anders said, pointing a finger at Fenris. "You try being chained to someone who hates everything you are."

"Anyone who was chained to you for any length of time would hate everything you are." Fenris jerked his wrist, pulling Anders' wrist toward him with the motion. "And you make me regret my attempts to be patient with you."

"He has a tendency to do that," Nathaniel said. "Come, and I will find you something to drink to fortify you against Anders' company."

"Now you're just trying to make me feel bad," Anders grumbled, trailing after Fenris as much as the chain would allow as Nathaniel led them out of the office.

Everything about the situation felt constructed to make him uncomfortable and unhappy. No one was happy to see him, no one trusted him, he suspected that his old friends liked the spirit he shared a body with better than they liked him, he was still chained to Fenris, and worst of all—

—worst of all he seemed intent on throwing a pity party for himself.

This was ridiculous. He was a grown man, a mage of some standing, and he tried to be a good man. He was doing good for people in Kirkwall and helping other mages than just himself. He had a real cause and reason to live.

Besides, that blue and silverite uniform the wardens wore these days just didn't suit him.

• • •

By the time Zevran found them in the mess hall, Anders was more than willing to go back upstairs to Dal's office. Nathaniel had managed to produce a bottle of wine that Fenris pronounced quite acceptable, but Justice had not allowed Anders to partake.

He had been forced to listen, _sober_ while Fenris recounted the story of meeting Hawke while on the run from Danarius. Nathaniel seemed fascinated by the story and by the revelation that Hawke was Dal's cousin. Anders felt a pang of jealousy that the two seemed to be getting along when Nathaniel would barely look at him.

Justice's suggestion that it was his own fault for being hostile and uncommunicative did nothing to help. What did _he_ know about how people interacted anyway?

Being called back up to Dal's office almost felt like a reprieve.

Dal was seated behind his desk with a map spread open in front of him. It was held down with two smooth stones, Padraic's notes, and a blood-stained book.

"I have good news and bad news," he said by way of greeting.

Anders and Nathaniel took one look at the map and groaned as one, earning a quizzical look from Fenris.

"Lesson one," Anders informed him. "When he says that, there's more bad news than good. Lesson two, when he has a map of the Deep Roads open while he says it, there is no good news."

"Not true," Dal said. "The good news is that I think I know someone who can help you."

"And the bad news?" Anders asked.

"It's the Architect," Dal said.

Nathaniel cursed and Anders honestly contemplated throwing up.

He looked over at Fenris, who could only know that it was bad news, but not why. "I'll play you a game of wicked grace, loser gets to keep one hand."

"Don't be melodramatic," Dal said. "Granted, he's an incredibly powerful darkspawn mage who captured us all, took our blood, and—"

 _Touched Oghren's junk,_ Anders thought giddily, trying not to let himself teeter over into hysteria.

"—experimented with it, but he had a reason, and he gave us valuable help with the Mother."

Dal fixed Anders with a level gaze. "I know that Justice never approved of my decision, and he's not alone in that, but it was the right decision. He has kept his word – the Deep Roads are safer than they've ever been, and there are fewer darkspawn sightings on the surface."

"No one has seen him since we killed the Mother," Nathaniel said. "And Weisshaupt sent wardens after him."

"Even though I told them not to," Dal said, brows drawing together in a fierce frown. "I don't like being second-guessed."

"Let me guess," Anders said. "You know how to find him."

"I know how to find someone who knows how to find him," Dal said, easing his frown.

Fenris was left out of the history the three wardens in the room shared. "You want us to seek help from a darkspawn mage? How is that even possible?"

Dal shifted the book he had been using to hold down the map and flipped it open to a bookmark, then shuffled Padraic's papers until he found the page he was looking for. He laid it next to the book and pointed to a symbol on the page before pointing to a symbol in the book.

"I took this from the Architect's rooms after he captured us," Dal said. "It seemed only fair at the time, what with his stripping us down to our smalls and giving our equipment to his experiments." He tapped the book with a forefinger. "This is old magic, I have to wonder how your shopkeeper got his hands on any of it, but the Architect has access to magics humans and elves have not seen in centuries, lost in darkspawn hands. "

"If you believe the stories, Xenon is around four hundred years old, so it might not have been lost magic back in his day," Anders said. "But if you believe the stories, you're also eight feet tall and built like a qunari."

Dal breathed out a laugh and shook his head. "If only. I might not have quite as many scars."

"I like your scars," Zevran said. He had moved to lounge, catlike on the couch, with Ser Pounce-a-lot settled comfortably on his chest. "Especially the one—"

Dal coughed and Zevran gave a throaty chuckle. "You are always interrupting me at the good part. I would almost think you do not want your friends to know that you have a scar on your shapely backside shaped like—"

 _"Zevran."_

Nathaniel spoke up. "I already know about the scar. You bring it up at least once a fortnight."

"This is true, my friend," Zevran agreed, scratching Ser Pounce-a-lot's jaw until Anders could hear him purring from the other side of the room. "But I have not had the opportunity to share the information with our new friends, and surely it is a part of the Warden Commander's legend that should be spread far and wide."

"He's worse than Isabela," Fenris said, rubbing his forehead.

Both Dal and Zevran turned their attention to Fenris. "Isabela?" Zevran asked. "Surely not the lovely and inimitable Captain Isabela?"

"Probably," Anders said. "She likes to brag about the time she took the Hero of Ferelden belowdecks, so to speak."

"Not alone she didn't," Zevran said, leering.

"Is there anyone in Thedas who hasn't known Isabela carnally?" Anders asked, semi-rhetorically.

"A few virgins in the Anderfels," Zevran replied cheerfully. "But I hear she cut quite a swathe through the Rivaini chantry."

"Forgetting Captain Isabela's charms—" Dal said, doing his best not to look embarrassed by the revelation about his dalliance with Isabela.

"But how could we, my love?" asked Zevran. "When they are so… ample?"

"They are at that," Anders agreed. "But if we can get back to the nightmare that Dal is proposing so that I can move on to the screaming in terror part of the agenda?"

"Don't be a baby," Dal said, "It shouldn't be too bad. We'll go here," he pointed to one of the Deep Roads entrances on the map, "and find the Messenger. He has a camp there most of the time. Occasionally he ventures up to the surface, but the odds are good we'll find him there. He'll be able to take us to the Architect."

"And then we shall ask a darkspawn mage to release us from our bonds," Fenris said, not bothering to hide his disbelief. "And he will do it from the kindness of his heart? Or for gold? Or will he simply rend the flesh from our bones because he is a _darkspawn?"_

"Anders can make the payment." Dal met Anders' eyes and held them. "It's the _just_ thing to do."


	18. Chapter 18

They would be leaving in the morning. Dal had suggested paying the Vigil's merchants a visit if they needed supplies, which would be why Fenris was being poked by a high-strung human smith.

"I don't know _what_ the Warden Commander expects me to do with so little time," the smith complained. Anders had introduced him as Wade, indicating the man's partner as Herren.

"Master Wade," Anders soothed in a way Fenris had never seen from him before. "Everyone knows that if there is an armorer in Thedas who can work miracles, it's you."

Except the miracle of getting them out of their fetters, which had been their first request for the smith. At least Wade had stopped trying before he damaged his tools as had Smith the smith in Kirkwall.

"It's a small thing really," Anders wheedled. "Just fix the upper part of his armor so that he can get it off and on while we're like this." He rattled the chain to make his point.

He leaned in conspiratorially. "To be honest, Master Wade, he's getting a bit ripe."

Fenris felt his lip curl in a silent snarl, particularly when Wade sniffed him.

"I've smelled worse," Wade pronounced. "But since I never could get you into some of my armor, I will do it for your partner."

Herren coughed, drawing Fenris' attention in time to see him make a paltry effort at hiding his smirk.

"I am not his partner," Fenris said icily. "I am also not his friend and it is not for his convenience that I am agreeing to this. I expect my armor to be returned to me at least as serviceable as it is now."

"Serviceable?" Wade sneered. "This is _garbage!_ What I return to you will be nothing less than art."

Fenris had felt a twinge of trepidation when Wade cut the armor at his right shoulder, releasing his upper body fully for the first time in something like two weeks. He hated exposing himself like this to the prying eyes of strangers, but Wade had eyes for nothing but the armor. Apparently if he did not make it or could not improve upon it, it simply did not matter to the man.

He carried the leather armor away, muttering to himself about shoddy craftsmanship and men who couldn't be bothered not to get out of the way of swords instead of letting people poke holes in their armor, leaving Fenris shivering in the cold Fereldan autumn air.

Herren, surprisingly, came to his service, draping a thick woolen cloak embroidered with the Vigil's Keep emblem over his shoulders.

"I want that back in the morning or you're paying for it," he informed Fenris, disabusing him of the notion that it was simple kindness.

"I want my armor back in the morning or you will be paying for it," Fenris replied in kind. "I will not leave this keep unarmored."

"Don't you worry about that," Herren said, cocking his head to listen in on Wade's mutterings before grimacing dramatically. "You've got him talking about 'exotic materials' again. He won't sleep when he's in one of these moods."

He leaned in and dropped his voice. "For Andraste's sake, when you get your armor in the morning, if you don't like the color, just don't tell him, tell me. I'll get it taken care of. If you tell him, neither of us will sleep for a week and I just can't take that again."

"Black," Fenris said firmly. "Just ensure that it is black."

Herren rubbed his temples and sighed dramatically. "If he decides it should be fuchsia, tell him it is the most amazing fuchsia armor you have seen, then come to me and I will give you a black dye."

He looked at Fenris with an instant's naked pleading. _"Please._ I'll throw in the cloak for free. You don't know what he's like when he gets in one of his 'no one appreciates my art' funks. The tear stains are murder to get out of leather armor."

"He'll do it," Anders said to fill Fenris' nonplussed silence, already trying to drag him away. "We know that Wade will do his usual amazing work. _Come on."_

Fenris drew the cloak more tightly around himself and followed Anders back into the keep and its waiting warmth. If it had been a warmer evening, he might have fought it more, but a Fereldan autumn was chillier than much of winter in Minrathous or even Kirkwall. His armor was already cut and useless as it was, he would have to set aside his concern for it until the morning.

Oghren was waiting for them when they made it back into the throne room, Brutal trailing at their heels, the remnants of a lamb bone still clenched in his jaws.

"There you are," he called in a gravelly rumble. "Been waiting for you. Commander says we're heading down in the Deep Roads. Sigrun's gonna be jealous when she gets back." He raised his tankard. "I say we get loaded tonight, 'cause tomorrow we'll probably be dead."

"You'd say that if tomorrow we were going to have a nice long sleep and get up to be massaged by a dozen naked beauties," Anders observed.

"Well yeah," Oghren said. "If I got enough of a hangover, I might leave one or two of them able to walk when I'm done with them." Even his laugh sounded as though it should have a smell. "Nothing like a good hangover to make me hard on the darkspawn and soft on the beauties."

Anders raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. "I don't even know what I could add to that. I can't say much for the mental images it conjures, but I'm not sure I want you to hit me when I point them out."

Fenris eyed the dwarf warily. He had known some formidable dwarven warriors in his time, and they _could_ consume prodigious amounts of alcohol, but this dwarf seemed almost as though he was _constructed_ of prodigious amounts of alcohol.

"Eh?" Oghren asked before his bleary gaze sharpened. "Commander told me that you joined up with Justice. Izzat true?"

Beside him, Anders drew a deep breath and closed his eyes in a slow blink before nodding. "We did."

"Has he figured out how the pipes work yet? Everything flowing good and proper? The great hooded serpent's reared its ugly head?" Oghren asked, leering.

"Good _night_ , Oghren."

For once, Fenris did not even pretend to object when Anders pulled him away.

• • •

"Not all of your old friends are angry with you," Fenris said once they were in private. Dal had given them a guest room, reasoning that the two of them would need more space than one of the warden's rooms would have allowed. It was not as large as the room they had shared back in Amaranthine, but it had a bed large enough for two men and a cat.

"Oghren's different," Anders said while he struggled with the cork in a bottle of wine he had filched on their way up to the room.

Fenris plucked the bottle out of Anders' hand and deftly removed the cork with his belt knife before taking a long swallow. Tomorrow they would go in search of a talking darkspawn to take them to another talking darkspawn from whom they would beg a favor. It was possible that one bottle would be nowhere near sufficient.

"He is a drunkard," Fenris agreed when he lowered the bottle and held it out to Anders. He was aware of the irony of the statement coupled with the wine staining his lips, but it was the least of his hypocrisies.

Anders took the bottle and conducted an internal argument that was visible in the flickers of expression that darted across his face. Finally he sighed and tipped the bottle to his lips, swallowing only once before passing the bottle back to Fenris.

"I hate the Deep Roads," Anders admitted while Fenris drank. "I hate feeling the darkspawn in my head, I hate how _heavy_ it is down there."

"You live in Darktown," Fenris observed unsympathetically. "You obviously aren't afraid of the dark, and you and I… you aren't afraid of tight spaces either."

Anders snorted a laugh. "I rather like tight spaces."

"Don't be glib." Fenris took another swig from the bottle and held it out to Anders who eyed it longingly, shook his head no, and then grabbed it from his hand anyway. "What is so different about going into the Deep Roads, and is it going to impair you?"

Anders tipped his head back and swallowed once, twice, and looked to be trying for three times before his throat locked up. He sputtered and thrust the bottle back at Fenris.

"I'll get by." He coughed to clear his throat and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "If I were impaired down there, I'd be long dead and you wouldn't be in this predicament, would you?"

They were seated side by side on the floor, leaning against the bed. Anders leaned his head back against the mattress to stare up at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts before he resumed speaking. His voice was hushed, tight with the fear his memories evoked.

"When you're a Gray Warden, you can sense darkspawn. It isn't like feeling sunlight on your skin or hearing someone's voice, it's like they scritch scratch around inside your mind, leaving little scratches that don't quite bleed, but you can still feel them constantly until you're far enough away. That's part of it, but I can take that on the surface."

"And what is the rest?" Fenris asked. He took another pull from the bottle and let it roll around on his tongue before he swallowed. The alcohol was starting to spread its pleasant lassitude out through his limbs, making them feel both heavy and light at the same time. If he could maintain just this pleasant floating feeling, he would happily forgo the other effects of drinking altogether.

"The rest?" Anders turned away and dragged the coverlet off the bed, arranging it over his legs and Fenris' before pulling it up to cover himself to the neck. "The rest is how dwarves build."

"You hate the Deep Roads because you hate dwarven architecture?" Fenris asked incredulously.

"Yes." Anders pulled the coverlet tighter around his throat and slid down, looking small. "They build so that you can feel the weight of the stone overhead. Humans don't build like that. Darktown doesn't feel like that. Most humans hate feeling the weight of a mountain right over their heads so we try to make things feel…" He shrugged, groping for the right description. "Walking around Darktown can be a lot like walking through a part of some keep or castle that just doesn't have windows. Going through the Deep Roads can be roomier – and don't ask me why such small people go for such big architecture, but they do – but at the same time, they seem to _celebrate_ the fact that a whole bloody mountain might come down on their heads at any moment. They want you to feel it. Going down into the Deep Roads, I can feel the darkspawn, dark and shadowed and scratching in my head, and I can feel every single inch of stone overhead just waiting to bury me so deep that even other people's memories of me will be lost."

He shivered and turned his face away from Fenris. "I _hate_ the Deep Roads."


	19. Interlude

Even in the deepest part of the night the Vigil was not entirely silent. Just in the guest room that was theirs for the night he could hear deep regular breathing, the occasional shift of a body under blankets, the dog's stretch and yawn, the slow hiss of a knot of wood releasing its trapped moisture in the fire before letting go with a sudden pop.

Beyond the room the Vigil breathed its own night breaths, air soughing down the halls when a door was opened and closed, footsteps scraping, the occasional hushed exchange between guardsmen on their night watches, even the near-inaudible grind of stone settling into its own rest, cooling as the day's warmth bled out into the chill night.

Justice remembered nights in the Vigil more now than he had since joining with Anders. Remembering was a tricky thing for a being ill-accustomed to the labyrinths of physical memory, or even more so to the tricks that a human mind played on itself when it painted a picture that it labeled "truth" but was so heavily colored by perception and perspective.

Lying in Anders' body in the depths of a Vigil night, Justice was more himself than he had been in years, and even that – perceiving "Justice" as a being that could be assigned gender – pointed to the trickiness of his situation.

Seeing his old companions, his old _friends,_ through Anders' eyes as a silent passenger made him chafe at his situation in a way he had not since his earliest days in Kristoff's body. He had not thought it would be possible, but he missed them, and in missing them was once again acutely aware that he had discovered desires, had found that he had _wants_ that were irrational but compelled him despite that.

He wanted to talk to Widald Amell again as they had in the past. He wanted the man to listen to him as he explained why he and Anders had made the choices they had made. He wanted to speak with Nathaniel, to feel his attention, undivided, as he thanked him for showing him that he did not have to be a demon.

He paused at that thought. He wanted to tell Nathaniel that, but another lesson he had learned along with desire was doubt. Vengeance lurked within them – within Anders and Justice, bound together as they were – and Vengeance was no spirit. Vengeance was a demon.

It felt _good_ to be Vengeance.

Perhaps Nathaniel could counsel them. Nathaniel had sunk himself in his quest for vengeance and had clawed his way to the surface before hate drowned him. Nathaniel wanted to speak to him. He resolved that they would speak when this was ended, when he could speak through Anders' lips and move Anders' hands without bringing humiliation to Fenris.

Merely thinking of Fenris made the low hum of the song from the elf's lyrium rise in his consciousness. He could feel Fenris against Anders' back and he could feel the lyrium that painted a shield down Fenris' spine pressed against their skin.

His desire to press Anders' body against the full length of Fenris' body and tongue every line of lyrium that both decorated and defaced his skin and soul shamed him. It was another, more insidious way to birth a demon than the rage that nursed Vengeance.

He needed Anders to be strong for them, and Anders failed them both. Out of desperation Justice tried to push him to hate Fenris – if Anders hated him, he could not want him. Was that not logic?

Not for the human body or the bizarre double-edged blade that was the cutting edge of the human mind. Anders could both hate Fenris and at the same time have that hatred stoke his lust. Worse, the more his lust was inflamed, the more Justice felt Anders struggling to justify it to himself, trying to tell himself that Fenris had suffered too, that he had reason for his rage.

Anders would not admit that to himself, but Justice was a more impartial observer. Except that merely telling himself that he was impartial showed that he had learned human hypocrisy more astutely than he had realized.

He was not impartial. Not at all.

Gently rocked by the motion of Fenris' breathing, he could feel their body stirring with lust.

Their body? Anders was gone for the moment, away in the Fade where Justice could not follow. Did that not mean that it was _his_ body? Did that not mean that this ache that grew in his groin was his and his alone? Did that not mean that the lust for more than just the touch of lyrium…

…was his?

Call it cowardice, but Justice retreated deeper into Anders' mind. When Anders returned from his dreams, he would know what to do.


	20. Chapter 20

It was most of a day and a half’s travel before they left the road and struck out through the forest toward the Deep Roads entrance that Dal had indicated would be closest to the Messenger’s camp. They followed a rocky, near invisible path that led through sparse undergrowth, conifers rising high above them that filtered the sunlight to a green haze by the time it reached their small group. Their footsteps were muted by the carpet of needles shed by the tall trees.

Zevran ranged out ahead of the group while Nathaniel moved invisibly somewhere in the forest behind them. Walter and Brutal in turns disappeared into the forest on silent paws, describing circles around the group as they traveled. Oghren clomped alongside Dal, while Anders and Fenris walked behind them. There was no chatter among the group, each man alone with his thoughts.

Anders’ mind skittered between thoughts of having to go into the Deep Roads and thoughts of Ser Pounce-a-lot. Ser Pounce-a-lot would have made this part more bearable, riding his pack and meowing at him and letting Anders pet him as the anxiety slowly rose from the pit of his stomach to his breastbone, from his breastbone to his throat. He had left Ser Pounce-a-lot at Vigil’s Keep, though the decision made him ache with fear that he would never see his dearest friend again. But Ser Pounce-a-lot had always hated the Deep Roads, and time had at least blunted his selfishness enough to consider that when he made the choice to leave him behind.

Fenris was not brooding, he was fretting. Anders could see him checking his armor repeatedly as they left the road behind. The third time he flicked his cloak aside to check the leather, Anders could not resist a low murmur.

“It’s black now, you can stop checking. You got every bit of pink with Herren’s dye.”

“Fuchsia,” Fenris corrected him. “Herren called it fuchsia.”

“Fuchsia,” Anders conceded. “Which was essentially a fancy word for bright pink, but never you mind, you covered it all. There is no fuchsia left on your armor as a mating call to darkspawn. ‘Look at me, I’m on the pull in my pretty pink armor.’”

Dal looked back at him and said one word. “Anders.”

Anders subsided, feeling like a chastised child. Just for that he wasn’t going to tell Fenris about the one tiny streak he had missed on one of his shoulder spikes.

Zevran slid out from behind a tree to fall in step beside Dal. Anders had to strain to hear his low words. “It is very quiet here, yes? I think you are right in thinking your darkspawn is near, even the birds do not wish to associate with such a creature.”

That made the birds smarter than the men, to Anders’ way of thinking.

Dal nodded. “Have you found it?”

“It is just up ahead, my dear warden. Have I mentioned how I enjoy seeing you like this, back in the field and in charge? When this is over you and I shall spend some quiet time in which I shall enumerate the ways in which it stirs me.”

“When this is over,” Dal agreed with a ghost of a smile. “I would tell you to stop flirting and get your head in the game, but…”

“But this is the game,” Zevran finished for him. “And my head is always in it. It is one hundred yards ahead mostly screened at the entrance by heavy brush. A casual observer would easily miss it, but I am never casual in my observations. There were traps, but as you should expect, I have disarmed them.” He buffed his nails on his armor before pulling on a pair of gloves crafted of leather so fine it reminded Anders more of silk. “Crude things. I am almost offended not to have been given a greater challenge.”

“There will be other challenges,” Dal said, his face settling into grim lines that Anders had always thought of as his warden face.

He raised a hand to call a halt and waited for Nathaniel to melt out of the forest to join them before speaking. “I will do the talking when we find the Messenger.” He gave Fenris a hard look. “You will all keep your weapons sheathed—” Anders tried not to squirm when Dal pinned him with an equally hard look. “—and your magic contained unless _I_ give the signal. Zev, Fenris, do you best to avoid contact with the darkspawn and if there is anything tainted in there – you’ll know it when you see it – do _not_ touch it. Anders I’m trusting you to guide Fenris on that.”

Anders nodded, reminded of other times and other places. “I’ll watch him, Commander.”

“Oghren, I want you covering these two. They’re both impaired and I don’t want either of them getting killed.”

“Guarding the skirt and the elf,” Oghren grumbled. “Ain’t as much fun as killing darkspawn.”

“You’ll have a chance to get your axe wet,” Dal assured him. “But we will not strike the first blow unless I say so.”

Oghren grunted and pounded his right fist into his left palm. “You say the word, Commander, and I’ll kill it.”

Dal gave him a half smile. “I know. Nathaniel, you know what to do. This is just a standard run unless I tell you otherwise. Zev and I will take the lead. I trust his enlightened self-interest to keep me from stepping in any traps.”

“That is such a perfect way to express it,” Zevran agreed. “Because my beloved warden is so cold to me when he is still healing after stepping in a bear trap, I have learned it from painful personal experience.”

Anders slid a glance over to Fenris, but could read nothing from his impassive countenance.

“Let’s get this over with,” he urged when he could no longer stand the anticipation. Just a hundred yards down the path waited everything he hated about being a Gray Warden, and if he could not run away from it, the next best option was running _to_ it.

The entrance had once had a great stone door taller than the height of two men. Sometime in the distant past, that door had been blasted to rubble by magic or siege engine. Zevran was correct in saying that brush screened the entrance, but some of the brush was twisted and blackened, describing a path through the growth back into the opening. Vines shrouded the upper half of the broken doorway, hanging down in twisted tendrils that made Anders duck instinctively when he passed under them, despite the fact that they were at least four feet out of his reach.

Watery gray light filtered in behind them, leaving the group to pause just inside the opening while their eyes adjusted. At a word from Dal, he took his staff in hand. This was familiar as well, he and Dal calling forth light from the heads of their staves to light the hall around them.

It still bore the hallmarks of dwarven construction – high, heavy ceilings; perfectly set flagstones; and carved panels in the walls that no doubt detailed some obscure Paragons being shining examples of dwarfiness. Anders thought that if he brushed away the grime crusted in the carvings, he would probably see an idealized dwarf crushing a darkspawn under one heel while quaffing ale with one hand and forging vast engines of destruction with the other.

“It is here,” Nathaniel said, breaking his silence for the first time all day. “I can feel it.”

“As it no doubt can feel us,” Dal said.

Of the whole group, including the two mabari, it was likely that only the two elves could not sense the darkspawn that called itself the Messenger.

Anders could feel the Messenger, and could feel that there were no other darkspawn nearby. It should have been a comfort, but the intelligent darkspawn had more presence than the run of the mill genlocks and hurlocks; the “scratches” it left in his mind were deeper. He had asked other wardens how they sensed the darkspawn – Nathaniel and Oghren among them – and each expressed the sensation differently. None described it as pleasant.

“Get on with it,” he muttered.

“Messenger!” Dal called, raising his voice until it echoed back at them. “You know me. I am Widald Amell, Warden Commander of Vigil’s Keep and I would speak with you.”

“Gray Wardens,” hissed a voice that rebounded around the hall, confusing the ear as to its origin. Everyone tensed, searching the shadows and the depths of the hall for the source of the voice. The mabari growled but held their places at signals from Dal and Fenris. “Gray Wardens are not to be killing the Messenger.”

“We are not here to kill you,” Dal said. “I am the one who spared you in Amaranthine.”

“The Messenger remembers.” The darkspawn that called itself the Messenger revealed itself, sliding out of the shelter of a fallen boulder to take hesitant steps closer.

It wore a hooded cloak, the hood pushed back enough to reveal a face that was a parody of a dwarf’s, elf’s, or human’s. Its indistinct, sibilant speech was explained by its lipless mouth filled with jagged teeth in a face where its nose was more like two open wounds. Its skin was a diseased gray save for a strip of crimson, twisted flesh that stretched above its eyes and disappeared up into the left side of its hood.

Anders – and Justice within him – hated reminders of what they had been party to in Amaranthine. He still remembered the screams that rose from the city as Dal and his companions turned away to return to Vigil’s Keep while archers rained fire down on the city with no discernment between the darkspawn and the people trapped within. Those screams had returned in his nightmares on more than one night in the intervening years.

He shivered at the rasping voice and the memories it breathed back to life.

Beside him, Fenris stiffened and Anders tugged the chain between them to keep him from reflexively drawing his sword.

“What does the Warden want with the Messenger?” it asked.

Dal stepped forward, signaling his companions to stay in place as he moved closer to the hunched darkspawn.

“I want you to take me to the Architect,” he said, tone implacable.

The Messenger shook its head vehemently and backed up. “No, no. The Architect is not to be found. The Gray Wardens are not to follow the Architect.”

Dal followed its shuffling retreat step by step, keeping the distance between them steady. “Not the Gray Wardens. Me and my companions. You will take us to the Architect. He allied himself with me before and in return I killed the Mother for him. I say he owes me a debt and you _will_ take me to him.”

“No.” The Messenger straightened as much as it could. “The Warden wanted the Mother’s death, there is no debt. The Warden would have been killing her without the Architect because that is what the Warden does.”

“If ever there was an opening for a threat…” Anders muttered, earning an unreadable glance from Nathaniel. He forced a broad grin for Nathaniel’s sake and shrugged.

“The debt is between me and the Architect,” Dal said, his voice dropping dangerously. “You do as the Architect tells you and _I_ tell you that it is for the Architect to say to my face that there is no debt.” He took a step forward and the light at the tip of his staff flared more brightly, leaving the Messenger to raise its hands to shield itself against its brilliance. “You will take us, and in return, I will allow you to live. Again.”

“The way is dangerous,” the Messenger said in a whine. “The warden is not to be blaming the Messenger for its brethren. Not all darkspawn are heeding the Architect and they do not listen to the Messenger.”

Oghren grunted. “Leave that to us, Ugly. I ain’t found a darkspawn yet that don’t listen to an axe in its ear.” 


	21. Chapter 21

The Messenger led them, because it had no choice. The hall in which it camped had an opening in the rear where the great metal locking mechanism that should have kept the surface world separated from the true Deep was half open, held in place by fallen rocks and bones that too small to be human or elven, but the occasional black stare from a tipped or cracked skull said not animal – dwarves then, who had fallen in their defense, although the mystery was what had attacked from above rather than burst out from below.

Fenris let the mystery occupy his mind as the Messenger led them past the failed lock and the bones of dwarves long forgotten.

Oghren looked down at the bones and shook his head. “Died like warriors at least. Worse ways to go down than with an axe in your hand.”

“There are better ways,” Nathaniel said, breaking his silence. “Just not for people like us.”

“What? You want to die in bed surrounded by little Howes?” Oghren asked, snorting derisively. “That’s codswallop for merchants and smiths to make them feel better about having to let others do their fighting for them.” He slid a derisive look over at Anders. “And men in skirts.”

“I’ll take a dose of codswallop,” Anders said. “Without the little Howes. That would be terribly awkward to explain.”

“It’s too late for you too,” Nathaniel said. “You can’t run away from being a warden.”

“I can bloody well try,” Anders retorted.

“Fat lot of good it did you, huh mage?” Oghren said with a low chuckle. “You know you can’t resist us.”

“How does Justice even allow you to run away from your duty?” Nathaniel asked.

Fenris nodded silently. He had often wondered the same thing himself. Plus, he rather enjoyed seeing how discomfited Anders was every time Nathaniel addressed him.

“I didn’t run from my duty,” Anders said, sounding tired. “I ran to it. The wardens could _use_ me, but mages _need_ someone who will stand up and say no more. We have been reviled and oppressed for too long and it is not right.”

Nathaniel didn’t slow his stride, barely changed his expression, but something in his posture changed as he nodded slowly. “Hello, Justice.”

• • •

“Did you ever think,” Anders asked several hours later as they walked through yet another endless tunnel lit only by the glow from Dal and Anders’ staves, “that Justice’s ‘side effect’ with you only happens when he’s touching you?”

“No,” Fenris said. “I have been endeavoring not to think about it at all.”

“Only,” Anders went on, not taking the hint. The mage did not take hints unless they were glued to the head of maul striking him in the head. “I’ve been thinking about it, and when we were on the ship, Justice took over when I was… you know.”

“Dangling upside down on the end of a tentacle,” Fenris supplied for him.

Zevran swung his head around to stare at the two of them before leaning in to whisper something in Dal’s ear. Dal shook his head and motioned him to focus on the path ahead of them and the Messenger, who still led them through the abandoned tunnel that had once been a bustling thoroughfare between thaigs.

“Yes, that,” Anders said dryly. “It wasn’t until you grabbed his – our —bugger pronouns— _my_ wrist that it happened. Same in the cabin.”

Fenris did not want to think of either instance. He did not want to think of them because this was the wrong time and worst place to think of the coursing energy that jolted through him like a full-body orgasm.

He made his tone harsh. “I assume you have a point, mage.”

“Yes. It’s that Just because I have – ah – problems when you light up doesn’t mean you have problems when Justice comes out.”

“And you wish to test that theory _here?”_ Fenris asked incredulously. “And if you are wrong? No. Do not. We will not chance this to facilitate a conversation between your d— spirit and his friend.”

Oghren chortled. “That answers my question about which one of you is the girl.”

Anders hissed through his teeth in irritation. “You are so lucky I don’t use magic frivolously.”

Which was not accurate if Isabela’s tales of a certain Denerim brothel were true, but Fenris was not of a mind to give Oghren anything more to work with if it involved theorizing about sex between him and the mage.

“Did you ask that of the Warden-Commander and his companion?” he asked Oghren instead.

“Didn’t have to,” Oghren said. “The commander might wear a skirt like this freak here, but he’s no girl.”

“On that you have my word,” Zevran chimed in, grinning. “He is most definitely all man.”

Dal coughed, but was distracted by a hand signal from Nathaniel. He nodded, his expression hardening. “If we are done theorizing about what is under my _skirt_ ,” he shot a look at Oghren, “my wardens should be readying themselves.”

In an instant the lighter mood darkened. Oghren pulled his axe off his back, Nathaniel nocked an arrow, and Anders, despite his assertion that he was no longer a warden, shifted his stance in a manner Fenris recognized from the times they had fought together.

“You’ll want to draw your sword,” Anders said, gripping his staff more tightly. “Nathaniel always was the most sensitive of us.”

Dal called to the Messenger. “Can you lead them away or talk some sense into them?”

The darkspawn turned and shook its head. “They will not be listening. They will feel the Gray Wardens and there will be killing. The Gray Wardens should be running.”

Oghren snorted. “Uh huh. Try another one. I’m long overdue for a good bashup. How many out there?”

Nathaniel rolled his shoulders and tipped his head, attention turning to some inner eye. “The good news is no ogres. The bad news is at least four shrieks, a full contingent of hurlocks with an alpha, the same in genlocks, and…” he grimaced, “emissaries. You know how they are in my head. I can’t say how many.”

Dal swiveled his attention to Anders. “Anders? How many?”

Fenris was surprised to see the man turning to Anders for input, but Anders just stared past them into the darkness, a line deepening into a furrow between his eyebrows as he concentrated. “Two,” he said, sounding distant. “Maker I hate the feel of emissaries.”

“But you’re so good at sensing them,” Dal said. “Right. Then we’ll start with a storm, it’s good to have you for this Anders, it’s always faster with two.”

Anders shuffled his feet. “I can’t.”

Dal frowned. “What do you mean you can’t? Is it the chain?”

“It’s—”

Zevran chortled. “Complicated. And as much as _I_ wish to hear the story, is it not true that when the wardens can sense the darkspawn, the darkspawn return the favor? Yes? Then let us save the explanations for later.”

Dal’s expression said that they would be revisiting this matter, but he nodded to Zevran. “I’ll get the first spells.” He scanned the walls and pointed to niches that could shield a single body. “Zev and Nathaniel there and there. Fire when they come out of the storm. Zev, stay with your bow as much as possible. The last thing I want is to conduct a life or death Joining down here.

“Oghren, hold back until they come through. You know what happened the last time you ran into the storm.”

“Uh huh,” Oghren said grimly. “Took months to grow my beard back. What kind of dwarf doesn’t have a beard?”

Fenris thought of Varric, but it was no time to smile.

“You two, hold the hounds,” he said to Anders and Fenris. “Don’t let them run until the first darkspawn clear the storm.”

Fenris wondered if this would be a storm like the hurtling fire Anders could call down, but rather than ask unnecessary questions, he nodded. He would see soon enough.

“Anders are there any spells you _can_ cast?” Anders nodded. “Then do what you can to the emissaries when you see them. I’ll do the same. Fenris…” And for the first time Dal faltered in his confident order-giving. “…do what you can.”

It stung to be relegated to “do what you can.” Fenris knew that he was an unknown quantity, but he balked at being viewed as some kind of burden to be defended or coddled.

Dal turned away to stride ahead of them down the passage, calling to the Messenger. “Get out of the way. Get back behind us or take cover. Don’t get killed in this, I’m not done with you.”

The Messenger ducked its head and backtracked the way they had come while Dal moved even farther ahead. It seemed as though he was challenging the darkspawn to sense him and come at his bidding.

Beside him, Anders murmured, “They’re coming.”

The mabari strained against the holds on their collars, but they were silent for all their eagerness. Oghren shifted restively. If he had not known where to look, Fenris would not have known Nathaniel and Zevran were there at all, but he could see the two men, bows ready, watching the passage ahead, waiting.

Dal’s voice rose in the fraught silence, sending ripples of reaction through the lyrium in his skin from the power laden in each syllable of the chant. He had been around mages long enough to know that this chant was going on longer than a simple battle invocation, and that its result would likely reflect the power being pushed into each word. There was a reason Widald Amell’s name was spoken across the entirety of Thedas. Fenris was seeing it firsthand.

When the last syllable of Dal’s incantation rolled into the air, the passage ahead erupted in crackling lightning. Even at a distance, it made the fine hairs on Fenris’ arms stand up.

Beside him Anders murmured, “I miss being able to do that.”

Dal barely paused between spells, taking up a new chant.

Oghren spat on the ground and moved ahead of Anders and Fenris, axe at the ready. “Too busy humping nugs to come pay the wardens their respect? Where are those blighted ‘spawn?”

“Almost here,” Anders said tightly. “Don’t complain.”

Brutal whined and jerked against Fenris’ hold until he snapped a command at him. Anders was having less trouble with Walter, who was alert and eager, but calmer.

Dal finished his spell and the storm exploded.

“Maker, I miss that too,” Anders said under his breath.

Where there had been only lightning, now the air swirled with ice, lightning, and howling winds. Dal retreated back toward the others and at an unspoken signal Oghren pushed ahead, putting himself between Dal and the storm.

The first darkspawn to push their way through the storm were genlocks. Barely out of the storm and still rimed with ice, the first two fell with arrows sprouting from throat and chest. Fenris glanced to the niches to see Zevran and Nathaniel calmly nocking more arrows and letting fly.

As one, Brutal and Walter tore themselves out of Fenris’ and Anders’ holds, racing down the hall toward the next genlocks to push through the maelstrom of ice and lightning.

“Alpha,” Anders said tightly of the next figure to stride out of the chaos, ice melting off its armor in rising wisps of steam. Its steps never faltered despite the lightning that had coruscated over its body before it broke free of the powerful magic.

It shook off arrows like buzzing flies, raised an armored hand to bat Brutal carelessly aside, and raised an axe to rival Oghren’s as the dwarf ran at him, voice raised in a shout. “Let’s see what your innards look like!”

At least it was better than “suck on a fireball.”

Anders raised his staff. “Give me all the slack.” When Fenris shifted his arm to give him as much free play as possible, he used the bladed end of his staff to scratch runes in the floor. “Don’t leave this spot until this goes off,” he advised Fenris. “Or until I scream run.”

Ahead of them, Dal was gathering a ball of arcane energy around his hand. It shed gritty particles into the air before he thrust his fist out to send it hurtling into the storm.

Everything seemed to be going in their favor. Oghren traded blows with the alpha while the mabari harried it from both sides. Zevran and Nathaniel picked off genlocks as they pushed their way through the chaos, Dal carefully threw more spells into his storm as though he could see things Fenris could not, and even Anders threw bolts of force from his staff, lending his assistance in wearing down the alpha.

Then the storm started to die.

First the lightning winked out, leaving the air thick and crackling with the lingering scent of ozone. Fenris could see other figures struggling in the remaining howling ice storm.

He hated that he was forced to watch others fight for him. Even _Anders_ was participating, but he felt as useless as the Messenger.

Then there was a sudden silence as the ice storm disappeared, leaving only a lingering chill, rapidly melting ice, and twisted frozen bodies of darkspawn in its wake.

The silence lasted only the space of a breath before the passage erupted with the howls of charging darkspawn.

What came next was a chaos to rival Dal’s storm.

Sudden harsh cries tore the air to either side of Fenris and Anders. Darkspawn leapt out of the air at them. They were attenuated things, all long limbs and gaping maws. They struck the marks Anders had laid on the ground, triggering a flash of light and magic that made Fenris’ lyrium tattoos flare in sympathy even as the darkspawn were blown back by a soundless magical concussion.

Nathaniel called, “Shrieks!” and caught one in the throat with an arrow as it lurched to its feet.

Beside him Anders swayed and nearly fell, brilliant light leaking from his eyes and the fissures that were opening in his skin like glimpses into the rawest part of the Fade.

“Not now, mage,” Fenris growled, raising his sword to fend off the other shriek before it could rake its claws down his arm. “Not. Now.”

It was Justice who caught Anders’ balance and raised his head. **”I will not falter.”**

Nor did he. Just as they had practiced in Darktown, and put into practice on the _Silverite Maiden_ , he moved with Fenris, leaving him enough slack in the chain to wield his sword, taking enough for himself to throw out arcs of stabbing ice and blazing lightning.

They moved on from the shrieks to the genlocks that poured down on them. Most of the hurlocks had died in Dal’s storm.

When he could look away from the immediate matter of keeping darkspawn claws out of his untainted flesh, he caught glimpses of the rest of the battle – Zevran fighting a shriek with longsword and dagger, Nathaniel still calmly firing arrow after arrow, Oghren kicking aside the body of the alpha to wade deeper into the fray, the darting forms of the mabari fighting with tooth and raking claw, and Dal, blue energy pulsing out around him in a circle that was described as much by the bodies of fallen, frozen darkspawn as by the bounds of the light it shed.

Dal cried out when a jagged bolt of lightning lanced out of the darkness, striking him and staggering him.

 **”Emissary,”** Justice said grimly, turning to search the shadows before calling out the words to a spell Fenris recognized from their practice together. It would catch the target in a collapsing vice of force and had the advantage of neutralizing spellcasters.

He did not see the emissary that Justice had targeted, but he heard a thin shriek of pain from the darkness.

 **”Slack,”** Justice demanded, and Fenris gave it to him. He raised both hands and gathered magic into them in a tiny flaming sphere that he thrust out in the direction of the emissary. It hurtled through the fray to find its target and explode into a raging fireball with the emissary at its center.

Fenris saw its head throw back in a scream that was lost under the detonation before it collapsed to the ground.

Around them the battle was faltering. Darkspawn fell under blades, arrows, magic, and mabari teeth until finally silence fell.

“What of the other emissary?” Fenris asked, turning to survey the carnage as Zev and Nathaniel emerged from their niches and began to pick through the fallen bodies, pocketing any valuables they found.

 **“Dead in the storm,”** Justice said.

The unearthly tones drew Nathaniel’s attention. “I thought you said he couldn’t speak,” he accused.

 **”It was not meant as a deception,”** Justice said. **”We believed it would be a hazard to Fenris.”**

“But it isn’t,” Dal said, wiping blood off his staff. “Good. I’ll want to have a few words with you later, but I’d rather talk to Anders now.”

“Commander,” Nathaniel began.

“I know,” Dal said. “But not now. You and Justice will have time later. I need to talk to Anders about his little problem.”

“Which one?” Nathaniel asked. “He has a surfeit of them.”

Anders took a deep breath and staggered back, letting Fenris keep him from falling as the cracks closed in his skin and Justice withdrew. “That’s hitting below the belt,” he complained shakily.

“I know,” Nathaniel said, and for once there was a ghost of a smile.

“Can you still heal?” Dal asked. “Can you at least be that much use?”

Fenris saw a flicker of hurt cross Anders’ face. “I can still heal.”

“He killed the second emissary,” Fenris said, surprising himself and Anders as well.

Anders checked the chain before murmuring a spell that flowed out around them in a wash of warm yellow light, dancing over the scorched burn on Dal’s chest from the emissary’s lightning, closing wounds that Oghren seemed not to notice on his arms and face, even stroking gently over the panting mabari to heal gashes and scratches.

“Good.” Dal said when the wave of healing magic receded. “Now while Zev and Nathaniel finish checking the bodies, you can tell me what happened to your magic.”

“Justice happened,” Anders said wearily, looking for a clear space on the ground before he sank down to sit. He craned his head up at Dal and tapped his temple with his forefinger. “He takes up space and the space that was most like home to him was the part that was closest to the Fade.”

“The part with your magic,” Dal said softly, and for once Fenris thought he heard real sympathy in his voice.

“The part with my magic,” Anders agreed. “You wouldn’t believe how much I lost. I’ve had to relearn almost everything and there are some things,” he shrugged. “there are some things that just aren’t coming back. It’s like that part is just burned out. Some of it has come back, but it's weaker, like the lightning storm. I can summon it, but it's not what it used to be. It's not good enough to work with your blizzard.”

Dal crouched down to bring his face level with Anders’. “Was it worth it?”

Anders sighed. “If I say no…” He shook his head and Fenris could hear the effort it took for him to sound firm. “It has to be worth it. I have to make it worth it.”


	22. Chapter 22

He could see Fenris looking at him while they walked, leaving the darkspawn bodies behind as they took the only light in the darkness with them as they followed the Messenger on this fool’s errand. He probably wanted to ask about his admission to Dal, and Anders did not want to speak of it. He did not want to think of it. He did not want to dwell on what was only the first of many sacrifices he had made in joining with Justice.

Especially not there with the weight of the world hanging overhead and a blackness straight out of some of Anders’ worst screaming nightmares prowling the edges of the light cast by his staff and Dal’s.

Nathaniel left his place at the rear of the group and exchanged a few low words with Oghren before the dwarf dropped back to take the rear guard, leaving Nathaniel at Anders’ side.

Anders knew what he would say before the words left his lips. “I want to speak to Justice.”

“I want a suntan,” Anders said ruefully. “Can I have mine first?”

And sod him for not taking the bait. “No.”

Anders cast a glance over at Fenris, but the bloody elf was looking anywhere but at him for the first time in hours. Nor was Justice any help when he wanted to speak with Nathaniel and was waiting for Anders to just give in.

“Don’t you want to shout at me first? Tell me how stupid and selfish I am? Maybe try to make me feel guilty about abandoning the wardens?”

“Why should I?” Nathaniel asked. “You seem prepared to shrug off anything I might say. I want to talk to someone more rational.”

 _Ouch._

“Fenris?”

“Do it,” Fenris said. Bastard. “But do not touch me.”

“That isn’t a problem.” And whether that was entirely true or not was a matter left for entirely different times.

“Fine,” he said ungraciously to Nathaniel. “Since I’m not even worth shouting at.”

“No shouting,” Dal said, making it clear that he was listening to every word. “Not down here. Nathaniel may shout at you when we are back on the surface.”

“I will not shout at him even there,” Nathaniel said. “And I want to speak to Justice now.”

Anders sighed. This probably wouldn’t even be possible in Kirkwall, to just let Justice take over like opening a door, but here, surrounded by the first people Justice had known outside of the Fade, the first friends he had ever truly had, Justice was there, and he was ready and able to step through the door and into control when Anders ceded it to him.

The world receded behind a blue haze and Justice turned blazing eyes to regard his old friend. **”Nathaniel.”**

Anders thought he would never, ever get used to someone else speaking with his mouth, moving his body. He never wanted to grow accustomed to being the silent passenger. It was too much like imprisonment.

Nathaniel nodded. “Justice. It has been a while.”

 **“It has.”**

Was it a good thing to see that Justice was just as awkward with Nathaniel as he was?

Nathaniel said nothing while they walked before he suddenly asked. “You and Anders?”

 **“This is a rhetorical question?”**

Right. Maybe more awkward.

The silence dragged until Anders thought perhaps Nathaniel had given up on talking to Justice despite his persistence, but Nathaniel disabused him of the notion and made him think that he was just gathering his thoughts.

“Why didn’t you talk to me about it first?”

 **“It was a decision that only Anders and I could make, and we did speak of it. You told me that if I found a willing host that you would not consider me a demon. Anders was willing.”**

Anders wanted to frown. If he had control of their face, he _would_ frown. Was that… guilt? From Justice?

No wonder they had so many problems.

“And how is it to have a living body?” Nathaniel asked. “Anders never seemed like he would be your type.”

His type? Maker how he wanted control of the mouth to ask.

Justice picked up on Anders’ desire and asked for him. **“What do you mean by that?”**

“Just that Anders never cared about high ideals,” Nathaniel explained. “He cared about a good tumble, good food and drink, and the chance to throw fireballs at idiots.”

 _The chance to shoot lightning at fools,_ Anders thought. The least Nathaniel could do would be to get his old credo right. He had repeated it often enough while deep in his cups.

 **“He cared about how mages are treated and how the Chantry abuses all those it is supposed to protect. He cares about seeing all men and women treated with respect instead of hounded for an accident of birth. He cares—”**

Fenris interrupted him with a snort. “Is this where he gets it? Would he cease his rantings if not for this spirit?”

“I don’t believe we were speaking to you,” Nathaniel said icily.

Anders silently cheered. Hearing Nathaniel use that tone on Fenris helped make up for the hours back at Vigil’s Keep where the two had all but excluded him from their conversation.

 **“He cares,”** Justice went on. **“And I saw the injustice of his circumstances. You are a thief, yet I saw no guardsman assigned to watch over you. You were as free as a Gray Warden ever is, but Anders was penalized despite his service to the wardens. We spoke many times of the plight of mages under Chantry rule. When I offered to help him he accepted.”**

“Get back to the questions about having a living body,” Oghren said from behind them. “Ask him if he’s done any deep stalking.”

 **“We have been into the Deep Roads,”** Justice said. **“Near Kirkwall.”**

“That isn’t what he meant, Justice,” Nathaniel said patiently.

 **“Ah.”** Justice paused. **“Innuendo. I remember.”**

Justice bloody well should, Anders thought. It wasn’t as though they weren’t subject to plenty of it back in Kirkwall between Isabela and Hawke.

“Was it worth it?” Nathaniel asked. The same question that Dal had asked Anders.

 **“I will make it worth it,”** Justice said with far more certitude than Anders had been able to summon when he had answered Dal. **“Ideals are greater than individuals.”**

• • •

The trek through the Deep Roads was exactly as Anders remembered it. Alternately terrifying and, well, terrifying. Sometimes the terror was the immediate, claw your face out kind, which was almost a relief because it could be battered, frozen, cut, and blown up. The other kind just had to be endured because it would never go away.

He woke the first “night” they camped with Fenris’ hand clamped over his mouth and a scream dying in his throat.

“Silence,” Fenris hissed. “Unless you wish to call down every creature for miles.”

Anders swallowed the last scream to a whimper and nodded his head before pushing Fenris’ hand away.

“You can stop rubbing against my backside now,” he croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Not that a cuddle after a nightmare isn’t nice, but the whole mutual hatred thing ruins the effect.”

Fenris snorted and rolled back to their usual back-to-back sleeping position. Anders took a deep calming breath and closed his eyes, picturing a cool, sunlit day, a breeze fluttering the feathers on his shoulders, the faint scent of grass and spring blooms on the air. Off in the tall grass he could see an orange tail like a pennant signaling the mighty stalking skills of Ser Pounce-a-lot.

“I do not hate you.”

His eyes snapped open.

“What?”

He twisted to look behind him as much as their positions would allow. “Did you say something?”

Fenris shifted to pillow his head on his free arm and said nothing, breathing slowly and evenly, apparently already asleep again.

• • •

After two days’ travel, the Messenger finally stopped them at a junction in the passages. It was a crossroads of sorts with a dust-filled fountain in the center. Just the sort of place experience had taught Anders to expect packs of deep stalkers, but there were no tell-tale squeaks, and while there were many tracks in the dirt, they were humanoid tracks, not those of the little lizard-like creatures.

“The wardens will wait here. The Messenger will return with the Architect if the Architect will be speaking with you.”

“We’ll go with you to the Architect,” Dal said, but the Messenger shook its head in vehement negation.

“Many darkspawn wait between here and the Architect. There will be too much death if the Gray Wardens travel there without the Architect. Gray Wardens may die. Darkspawn will die. The Architect will be angry with all. Stay. The waiting will not be long if the Architect will see you.”

“And if the Architect _won’t_ see us?” Dal demanded.

The Messenger bobbed its head and shuffled under Dal’s glare before saying. “The Architect will want to see the Gray Wardens. The Architect will want to see….” Its grasp of the common tongue seemed to fail it to the point that it simply raised a clawed hand to point at Anders and Fenris. “The Architect will want to see these ones.”

“Brilliant,” Anders muttered. “I wonder if it will bring us flowers.”

Dal frowned but nodded. “Go, but if you bring back an ambush, they will die, but you will not. Not for a very long time.”

Zevran’s grin was feral as he produced a slender blade from somewhere on his person and ran a thumb along its keen edge. “I shall make sure of it. One learns many things as an Antivan Crow, but I have never had a chance to expand my specialized skills to include darkspawn.”

The Messenger hissed and turned away to lope down one of the tunnels away from the group.

“You owe me for this,” Oghren growled at Anders. “Talking to darkspawn’s against the natural order of things.”

“The drinks are on me when we get out of here,” Anders promised, although Maker knew that would break his budget.

• • •

The wait was just shy of interminable. They settled in a few yards down the tunnel they had traversed to arrive at the open square, choosing not to move directly out into the square to expose themselves to potential attack from any of the four tunnels that branched out from it.

Oghren and Zevran played several hands of a dwarven card game called Shards. Dal sat with them occasionally adding a comment to their conversation while his eyes constantly scanned the square for any sign of movement. Nathaniel declined joining the game, taking up their rear guard again, waiting just at the edge of the light from the mages’ staves.

Walter and Brutal seemed to have worked out a system between themselves in which one of the hounds would venture out into the square to travel its full perimeter, snuffling at the tunnel entrances before returning to switch patrols with the other mabari.

Anders tried to persuade Fenris that learning to play Shards would at least pass the time, but after Fenris snapped, “No” at him, he gave up and settled back against the wall to wait.

He felt it first, the scrape of the Architect’s presence, jarring him from his attempts to picture the surface in sweet, sunlit detail. Worse than a dozen emissaries, no other darkspawn felt like the Architect.

He sucked in a breath and pushed himself up to his feet, tugging on the chain to urge Fenris up with him.

“He’s coming.”

The others did not question, simply packed away the cards and rose to their feet, turning toward the tunnel indicated until the wardens among them could feel the darkspawn’s approach.

“He’s only coming with the Messenger,” Anders said for Fenris’ sake. “No other darkspawn.”

“Do you think Utha will be with him?” Nathaniel asked Dal who shrugged.

“She looked pretty far gone in the taint when we saw her, and that was going on five years ago. She’s probably long dead.”

“Or she is like that dwarf, Ruck,” Zevran suggested. “In which case it would be a favor to her to be dead.”

“That wasn’t a dwarf anymore,” Oghren said. “It was just a scavenger. I don’t know what you’d call that Utha.”

“You didn’t see her.” Anders rubbed a hand over one bare arm, smoothing down the creeping chill he always felt thinking of the Architect and his silent companion. “I always wondered what made a Gray Warden go over to the darkspawn.”

“What?” Fenris turned toward him, his face a picture of shock. “What Gray Warden would do that?”

“It’s a long story,” Anders said, catching a glare from Dal. He shot back a look that said _I didn’t start it!_ but said to Fenris, “And not one I’m really supposed to tell. Just wait and see if she’s along.”

The conversation trailed off, leaving the group to wait in silent anticipation. Anders wanted to talk about _anything_ to drown out the flensing scrape of the Architect’s approach.

He bit back the urge to hiss through his teeth when the Architect finally emerged into the square. The Messenger lurked back in the tunnel entrance from which the Architect had emerged with a small gray figure at his side.

He looked at Fenris, who stared openly at the Architect. After Kirkwall and its rampant demon and abomination problem the Architect wasn’t that shocking, but it was still a striking and grotesque figure.

It stood taller than the average human, wearing robes that no human would ever have sewn or constructed or whatever the word was for the creation of that perverse pseudo-exoskeleton. It was gaunt and gray-skinned as most emissaries, but marred even for a darkspawn. Its face appeared eyeless with a bronze mask that seemed melded into its skin, the left side of its face pulled taut to join with a spiral that curved along the outside of its head like a nightmarish nautilus shell. Anders had stared at the Architect the last time he had seen the creature and had been at a loss to guess how much of its head was organic and how much was contrived disfigurement right down to the little ring that pierced the left corner of its mouth.

A silent dwarven woman stood at its side. Or at least it was recognizable that she had once been a dwarf. Her eyes were milky white, her skin corrupted gray with tendrils of black veining what skin was visible past her armor. Her chin-length red hair was the only thing that seemed to have escaped the taint.

“We have come,” the Architect said in that cultured, calm cadence that Anders remembered too well. “At your request, Gray Warden. Your need must be great.”

The creature confused Anders, troubled him. He couldn’t even choose between pronouns. The Architect was an “it” in his mind when he looked at it, but a “he” when he spoke.

“My need is two-fold,” Dal said. “The first is satisfied simply by seeing that you still live.”

“Ah,” the Architect breathed. “You will relay that information to Weisshaupt, will you not?”

Dal nodded.

“And the second?” he asked.

Dal held up a rolled up bundle of papers, moving close enough for the Architect to take them from his hand. Utha put a hand toward her sword hilt when Dal moved, but subsided at a gesture from the Architect, who took the papers from Dal and unrolled them, turning its eyeless gaze down to the pages.

It held the papers in its long-fingered, clawed hands with surprising delicacy, flipping through the pages quickly before turning its attention back up to Dal.

“I see. And what do you offer me?”

Wordlessly Dal shifted his pack and pulled the Architect’s book out, holding it for the darkspawn to see.

The Architect reached for it, but Dal took a step back. “Ah ah. You get this when the shackles are off, and you can keep those papers as well.”

“This is not a small thing you request,” the Architect demurred. “Even for the return of what is mine and these pages. I will require… more.”

Dal looked back at Anders. Dammit, for a moment there, he had thought maybe it would be as easy as a simple trade.

He sighed and stepped forward, trailing Fenris behind him. “The papers, the book, and a measure of Gray Warden blood.”

The Architect shifted its head toward Anders. He could _feel_ its scrutiny like a blade on flesh, but he stood unmoving until the Architect moved a hand in a peculiarly graceful gesture, indicating the tunnel from which it had emerged.

“I shall lead you to a place where these things can be done. I ask only that you do not attack my brethren, though you may defend yourselves if they attack.”

Dal nodded. “We will abide by your terms.”

“Then you may follow me.” He turned away, Utha at his side, gliding back into the tunnel where the Messenger fell into step behind him.

Oghren spat as Dal led his companions into the tunnel in the Architect’s wake. “Is this the worst idea or is this the worst idea?”

Dal thumped his fist down on Oghren’s armor-plated shoulder. “Says the dwarf who drank a whole barrel of pickle juice on a dare.” 


	23. Chapter 23

“This is madness,” Fenris said through clenched teeth as they followed the Architect through tunnels long lost to the darkspawn. He wondered if even the fabled dwarven shaperate – the long memory of the dwarven people – remembered these lost paths.

It had been one thing to contemplate asking this creature for help in the abstract, but now that they were following its inhuman glide through tunnels where neither it nor Utha and the Messenger needed light to navigate, he knew that it was a demon’s deal he should never have allowed more than a passing thought.

“Buddy, you don’t even know the half of it,” Oghren rumbled, clouting him in the small of the back in what was likely supposed to be a friendly gesture. “You can’t feel ‘em out there.”

“What does that mean?” Fenris looked over to Anders for an answer, but his expression was clamped down tight and gave no response.

“He means,” said Nathaniel from behind them, “that you aren’t a warden and for that you should be grateful. There are darkspawn all around us.”

“Nathaniel,” Dal slowed his stride to let the others pass, allowing him to fall into step with Nathaniel while Zevran dropped back to take up the rear guard. “Haven’t you learned to have more faith in me than that.”

“In you?” Nathaniel asked. “Always. But I also have faith in darkspawn to know nothing of honor. How can they?”

Fenris kept his eyes fixed on the Architect, though his ears almost twitched with his effort to hear every word that passed between Nathaniel and Dal.

“We’ll get out of this,” Dal assured Nathaniel, making Fenris wonder just how the man could be so confident. He supposed if a man had slain an archdemon, he might be justified in his confidence, but there had been several armies at his back then. Now it was just the six of them and two mabari, and being chained together did tend to hobble Fenris’ and Anders’ capabilities in a fight.

Dal and Nathaniel dropped their voices still more, exchanging words in a low murmur Fenris could not decipher despite his attempts to eavesdrop.

Finally Dal raised his voice again, “It’s all going to work out,” and Fenris felt as though that message for all of them, the Architect included.

He left Nathaniel at the back of the group and caught up with Fenris and Anders, walking at Anders’ side. “Justice never hated it down here.”

“I’m not just Justice,” Anders said, tension thrumming in his voice as he swiped a hand over his face. “Bring on the darkspawn. I’m not going to run screaming like a little girl.”

On Fenris’ side, Oghren chuckled. “I remember that one time we got chased out of the Crown and Lion, you in your smalls. You were screaming like a little girl then.”

“I had just seen you naked, you were drunk, and told me I had a pretty mouth,” Anders retorted, forcing a smile. “That’s enough to make any man run screaming.”

“Don’t want to be mistaken for a girl, don’t dress like a girl,” Oghren said, grinning for all the world as though they were on a nice stroll to get a drink.

“You should all be silent now,” the Architect cautioned. “My brethren are aware of your presence.”

Beside him Utha drew her sword, her attention on something beyond the mages’ light. Zevran jogged back out of the darkness to rejoin Dal, the two of them moving to the front of the group once more.

“I shall endeavor to restrain them, but that will be facilitated if you do not draw your weapons or make any hostile moves,” the Architect cautioned before moving ahead of Utha. Apparently her hostile move did not count, but the taint had spread so far that perhaps the darkspawn saw her as closer to one of their kind than not.

It raised its hand into the air and Fenris felt a chill trace the lyrium in his skin as an aura coalesced around that upraised hand. It was the center of an expanding corona of something Fenris could only describe as an anti-radiance. He felt as though he could see straight through to the Architect’s bones in that not-light.

Anders hissed and Fenris glimpsed a flicker of blue in his eyes before he closed them and took a deep breath, steadying himself. A glance toward Dal showed the other mage’s shoulders stiff and almost hunched while Zevran brushed his fingertips over his forearm. Even Walter and Brutal reacted, hackles raising on their necks and down their backs in hostile ridges.

Past the Architect, there was movement, all grays and blacks, armor not-gleaming, weapons not-shining in the negative radiance. Darkspawn packed the tunnel ahead. They shrank back from the touch of the Architect’s magic one step at a time until one broke and ran, followed by more and more until the tunnel was devoid of movement.

“Quickly,” the Architect said, dropping his hand. Utha immediately returned to his side as he moved more swiftly down the tunnel with the Messenger at his back.

Following them, Fenris’ nostrils flared at the lingering reek of darkspawn, so thick that it almost seemed as though he could be tainted by the very air.

The tunnel forked ahead, one fork sloping gently downward into utter darkness, the other ending in another of the dwarves’ incongruously large doors.

Without a word from the Architect, the Messenger loped down the tunnel, disappearing once he left the light. The Architect put out a hand and splayed it on the door’s surface before pushing it open, allowing a sickly yellow glow to spill out of the entrance.

“My brethren will not violate my sanctum,” the Architect said while Utha slipped past him into the space beyond. “We will conduct our,” it paused, almost puzzling out the next word, “business within.”

It held out a long, spidery arm in a parody of a gracious host escorting guests into a salon. Fenris expected something as ghastly as some of the refuges of blood mages he and Anders had seen in Kirkwall with Hawke. What awaited him in the Architect’s sanctum was instead a room filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves and books. They were stacked haphazardly on the shelves, on the floor, and on a great stone desk and high-backed chair that stood in the middle of the chamber. Even the desk was not spared the deluge of books, with piles stacked over much of its surface, leaving barely enough room for a writing set and a single large tome easily as tall as the length of Fenris’ arm from elbow to fingertips. The only bare space on the walls was a door on the wall opposite the entrance.

The room was lit by a single glowing orb suspended over the desk. The yellowish light it cast made his companions look ill and turned the Architect’s already sickly gray complexion skin putrescent. Fenris could not imagine trying to read by this light without eventually growing too nauseated to see the pages.

“I have a book,” the Architect said, following Nathaniel in and closing the door, “that has the same runes as in your notes.” It glided past them to one of the high shelves and chose a book from one of the seemingly random stacks. “I apologize that I have no seats to offer you, but I so rarely receive guests.”

Anders shifted restlessly beside him while Fenris tried to imagine the Architect receiving _any_ guests.

Apparently Dal shared Fenris’ difficulty. “What kind of guests do you receive?” he asked. “I thought you had trouble with your brethren.” The last word sounded forced, as though Dal would rather have said something else. Perhaps “murderous monster horde.”

The Architect brought the book he had chosen to the desk and settled into the chair. The chair was high-backed and ornate and proportioned for someone larger than a dwarf. Fleetingly Fenris wondered where the Architect had come by something like that so far from the surface. Utha came to stand behind him, watchful as some Chantry gargoyle.

“There are occasional traders who will deal with us,” the Architect replied. He opened the book he had chosen and set the pages from Kirkwall where he could refer to them as he paged through the book. “You may remember Armaas from our first meeting.”

Oghren snorted. “Is that what you call it?”

Dal shot him a look that quelled any further outbursts. “I remember Armaas. Do you often deal with Tal’Vashoth?”

The Architect turned a page. “I do not get so many merchants willing to brave the dark that I can be particular,” he responded. “I must apologize again, but if I am to find a means to free your companions, I must focus. If you will not touch the books, you and they may rest here until I am ready.”

“Of course.” Dal ushered the others to a corner relatively clear of piled books, taking a water flask when Zevran offered it to him.

“Do not let your guard down for a moment,” he cautioned them in a low voice. “And keep the route we took here in mind. We might have to backtrack in a hurry.”

Zevran’s murmur was barely audible. “I have taken the liberty of leaving a few surprises in the tunnels we traveled to get here. Should we need to, shall we say, take an expeditious farewell, stay close to the tunnel walls, do not run up the middle. It would be most unfortunate if any of you were to deny the darkspawn the presents I prepared with such care.”

Dal passed the water flask back to Zevran. “Eat a little, drink a little, try to rest if you can stand it. If this doesn’t end in a fight I’ll eat Oghren’s smalls.”

Anders groaned dramatically. “Maker, now he’s going to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy just to get out of getting anywhere near Oghren’s smalls.”

Fenris wanted to prowl, to pace, to loose some of his pent up energy in movement, but thought that Anders would be contrary and want to find a place to sit or stand to watch the Architect.

To his surprise, Anders shook himself out of his silence. “I can’t sit still.”

Together they walked the perimeter of the room, avoiding the stacks of books. Occasionally Anders would ask him to stop while he examined one book or another without touching it. Some of the spines were marked, and Anders seemed to recognize occasional titles.

Oghren sidled over to Utha after a time, grinning queasily. “So,” Fenris heard him say, “bet it’s been a long time since you’ve seen another dwarf.”

She said nothing.

“You know, even a lady as gray as yourself’s got to have needs.”

Anders groaned.

Utha stared at him with her flat, dead fish eyes.

“What do you say, you and me…”

 _“Oghren!”_ Dal’s crisp reproof swung the dwarf around.

“What? I was just trying to improve relations,” Oghren protested. “If you know what I mean.”

“Oghren,” Dal said in a tone that promised he was teetering on the brink of freezing Oghren’s family ore, “get over here and leave her alone.”

“And stop drinking that nug piss for a few hours,” Anders added. “It’s rotted the last bit of your brain.”

“That’s bronto piss you soft, nug brained, flower-sniffing, good for nothing—”

“Both of you,” Dal interrupted, “shut up. Now.”

Anders shut his mouth with a snap and Oghren, grumbling, rejoined the others where they waited.

Nathaniel shook his head. “Only you, my friend,” he said with a faint smile down at Oghren.

“A man’s got needs,” Oghren said, sounding petulant.

“My dear Oghren,” Zevran interjected. “I have seen your choices in women, and with the exception of the lovely Felsi, you have rather undiscriminating tastes. Which I can admire in a man, but when even one such as I tells you that there should be limits? It is time for you to pay heed.”

Dal did something that Fenris did not see, but which made Zevran give a tiny yelp. “I think I could be insulted by that.”

It was all almost light-hearted on the surface, but Fenris thought he could hear the sounds of whistling past the graveyard.

• • •

They all came alert when the Architect finally pushed itself back from the desk and rose, closing the book on the pages he had been studying and taking notes on before he picked it up. Oghren woke with a snort and wiped drool off his beard when Nathaniel nudged him with a boot.

“I have your answer,” the Architect told them. “We can see this matter concluded if you will but follow me.”

Dal started forward with Zevran at his side, but the Architect held up a hand to stop them. “Only these two. The energies that will be released in the ritual will be dangerous to those outside its bounds. You will stay here with Utha.”

It moved to the only other door out of the room and opened it, allowing a purple luminescence to spill out to merge with the yellow from the glow globe.

“We will be in my laboratory. Doubtless you will be able to come to your companions’ aid if they call for you, but I cannot proceed if my conditions are not met.”

Dal looked to Anders and Fenris. “It’s your decision.”

Anders shrugged. “If all I wanted was a vacation filled with terror and the promise of death, I could have stayed in Kirkwall with Hawke.”

Fenris caught Anders’ eye and nodded. “Let this be done for good or ill.”

They left their companions and followed the Architect through the door. 


	24. Chapter 24

Anders gripped his staff hard enough that he expected to hear his knuckles creak and followed the Architect into his laboratory with Fenris at his side.

Years ago in the Wending Wood’s silverite mine he had seen another laboratory the Architect had claimed as his own. Back then the floor had been littered with the bodies of men the Architect had been using in his experiments. More had hung in cages from the ceiling. They had mostly been Gray Wardens, and the Architect had wanted to use their blood to free the darkspawn from the call of the Old Gods.

Now he had followed the monster into a new laboratory and offered his blood up to it voluntarily. If he didn’t hear a thank you from Fenris when they were back under open sky, he was going to clout the ungrateful wretch about the head and shoulders.

This laboratory lacked discarded bodies or puddles of blood, for which Anders gave thanks. He could ignore the suspicious stains in simple gratitude for a lack of grisly debris. It was a vast room, perhaps it had been some kind of dining or gathering hall for the dwarves who had initially constructed these tunnels and dwarves. If so, that use was lost in the mists of time.

Low, dwarf-height tables lined two walls closest to the door. Jars, boxes, and even more books that had migrated in from the library littered their surfaces and even spilled over onto the floor.

All good so far, until Anders picked out the source of the purple glow that had spilled out into the library when the door was opened.

At the far end of the room, four stone pedestals each held a tall golden spire topped by a similarly golden ball. Magical energies danced from ball to ball, caging an empty stone bier. Both as a mage and as a host to Justice, Anders found its glow unnatural and fundamentally wrong.

He jumped a little when the Architect closed the door behind them, startling him from his examination of the room.

Fenris had put on his Ser Silent McStoicelf mask, which dropped the talking into Anders’ lap. As usual.

“Right,” he said, proud of himself that his voice did not either crack or go inhuman from Justice making an appearance. He thought it rather best for them all not to dangle something fascinating in front of the Architect. Not another something fascinating at least, given the lyrium-laden elf at his side. “What do we have to do?”

The Architect made its way past them to a floor switch to pull its handle, causing the magical energy to flicker out of existence, plunging the room into darkness.

Anders gasped and pushed magic into his staff to light its tip. He could feel Fenris draw his sword and settle into a fighting crouch.

“That was my oversight,” the Architect said calmly, opening a cabinet to retrieve a small amulet that shed a smaller version of the sickly yellow radiance cast by the globe in the library. “My kind do not need light for most activities. It was not my intent to alarm you.”

“You did a fine job of doing it anyway,” Anders snapped. “For future reference, anyone who isn’t a darkspawn probably doesn’t want to play a nightmare version of blind man’s buff with you.”

“I am unfamiliar with the term,” the Architect replied, a note of confusion in its tone. “I can but offer an apology for my lack of finesse with your kind.”

Anders could not bring himself to accept the apology of this creature. “Just tell us what we have to do to get these manacles off.”

“You must remove all your equipment and clothing.” The Architect turned its back on them to open a chest. If did not see the look Anders and Fenris shared – their anger for once directed elsewhere than at each other.

“No,” Fenris said, his tone steely. He still held his sword and glared at the Architect in a way that should have made the darkspawn fear for its life.

“You must,” the Architect said, ignoring the implicit threat. It turned with a tool in his hand before it moved to one of the pedestals and fit the tool into a socket at its base, flipping open the book it had brought along to consult its notes. “Your belongings will disrupt the energies I must use to weaken the protective wards on the manacles enough to break them.”

“If this is some trick,” Fenris began.

“It is no trick,” the Architect replied. It was still calm, and still focused on making some adjustment to the pedestal that made the spire begin to turn. “These are delicate workings. I would not be surprised to find that your individual unique aspects have affected the enchantment and the restraints as it is. In what way may not be evident until I begin.”

It rose to move to another pedestal, repeating its adjustments. “Now please, I ask you again, remove your equipment and clothing.”

Fenris and Anders exchanged another look before angling away from each other as much as possible. Anders set his staff aside, letting its glow extinguish when he released it and dropped his pack to the floor before stripping down to his smalls. That last covering could go when they moved on to whatever the Architect had planned next. Lastly he removed his Tevinter Chantry amulet and tucked it into his pack for safekeeping.

Fenris’ leggings did not leave much room for smallclothes. He stripped bare and clasped his hands over his groin to maintain some semblance of modesty. Anders let him have enough of the chain to do it, since he’d made his own futile attempt at modesty with his smalls.

He tried not to look at Fenris, but he could not help but notice the break in the flowing lines of lyrium that painted Fenris’ body. The graceless gouge on his left hip drew Anders’ attention despite his resolve. The scar was fresh enough to be livid red on Fenris’ otherwise tan skin, even in the dim light. He had helped dig that piece of lyrium out of Fenris’ flesh in another act of desperation during the previous summer. It had worked, and neither of them had ended up host to a demon that day. Together they had saved themselves and prevented the loss of countless more lives in Kirkwall.

There they were again, taking desperate measures. He tried to tell himself that if he was going to die horribly in a few minutes, at least the view was good, but neither Justice nor the cannonball weight of silent terror in his stomach let that thought carry any consolation or humor.

While they undressed, the Architect moved on with his adjustments to the pedestals. They waited for it to finish its work with the final pedestal, Anders shifting from foot to foot while the cold crept up his legs, bringing an ache that sank right into the bone. He thought it would probably would be less uncomfortable if he went barefoot all the time like Fenris.

“Aren’t you glad I had Wade fix your armor so you can take it off?” he asked Fenris, mostly to fill the silence.

The look that he received in response was eloquent in its disgust.

The Architect rose from its final adjustment and turned its blind face toward the pair. “I must request that you remove _all_ of your clothes,” it said in a tone of mild reproof.

Anders sighed and pushed his smalls off his hips and down his thighs before he stepped out of them. Maker’s balls it was cold. “I was just waiting for you to finish up. I don’t know what you keep under your robe, but what I keep under mine likes to be warm.”

Fenris shot him a look of pure disbelief.

Yes, he had just said that to the terrifying talking darkspawn.

He sidled closer to Fenris to get enough slack in the chain to cover his groin with his hands. Weren’t they just a strangely matched set now?

“Now what?”

“Now you will sit here.” The Architect laid a hand on the stone bier that was caged by the spires. “I will examine your manacles for any divergence from the notes, and then I will take the second part of my payment.”

Anders felt his hands and feet go clammy with sweat.

“My blood you mean,” he said to clarify.

“Your blood,” the Architect agreed. “After which I will scribe the appropriate runes on the manacles and your arms. With the magic I can channel to target the bier, it will be sufficient to neutralize the wards.”

He could just stay there, freeze in place, maybe hide his head in his hands and pray that it would all go away. Which would leave his favorite bits out on display to freeze, make him feel a right fool, and oh yes, not solve a bloody thing.

He sucked in a deep breath and nodded to Fenris. “Soonest started, soonest done.”

Together they walked to the bier. It rose to waist height, making it necessary for him to hop up in order to sit, incidentally resulting in his aforementioned favorite bits making contact with cold stone before he could get himself situated.

“Just for the record,” he said, shifting from one buttock to the other while he rectified the problem, “it’s _cold_ in here.”

Fenris hopped up more carefully and sat with his hands folded primly in his lap. “If you assure me that Frederick is usually not so small, I will bleed you myself.”

Anders felt his jaw drop. Flaming Void, Fenris had remembered Frederick. The embarrassment was almost enough to make him forget their circumstances, if only for a moment. But only almost.

The Architect waited for them to settle before approaching. “If I may?” it asked politely, indicating Anders’ manacle with a clawed fingertip.

No.

Void no.

He stuck out his right hand and clenched his jaw. Justice writhed angrily inside his mind, and it was almost a blessing – the internal argument and struggle to keep the spirit under control kept him from jerking his hand away when the Architect actually _touched_ him with its cold fingers and rasping claws.

He flinched at the touch; he could not help it. The scratching, scraping, _clawing_ sense of the Architect in his mind magnified tenfold at the touch.

 _I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t fucking—_ The Architect released his hand and turned its attention to Fenris.

Anders slumped, taking deep breaths through his nose, releasing them slowly through his mouth while the Architect examined the markings on Fenris’ cuff.

Fenris held himself rigid for the examination, his expression betraying little of the tension Anders had learned to read in his posture. He imagined that Fenris had learned the skill of hiding his emotions as a slave. He had always thought Fenris was a haughty bastard, but spending a protracted time with him every minute of every day had taught him that some of Fenris’ demeanor was more training than temperament.

Some of it was still that he was a bit of a haughty bastard, but there was a chance – just a thread of a chance – that he had come by it honestly.

The Architect released Fenris’ wrist and stepped back. “There is no deviation from the notes, thus I will not have to alter my plans. I ask only that you be patient and we will conclude our business.” The Architect addressed Anders. “Am I correct in assuming that you have some knowledge of healing? I will be unable to heal you after I take your blood.”

Anders suppressed a shudder and nodded. “Just get it over with before I freeze off some of my favorite parts.”

The Architect appeared unmoved by the personal aspect of Anders’ exhortation when it turned away to retrieve a wide-mouthed bowl and a knife that gleamed like black glass from one of the worktables.

“Tell me you cleaned that off since the last time you used it,” Anders said nervously, his attention fixed on the knife.

“Your right arm, please,” the Architect said, ignoring his words.

He suppressed the sudden child’s urge he had to grab Fenris’ hand for some comfort while a darkspawn cut into him, but they had done more than enough naked bonding already and he was no child. Like it or not, he was a Gray Warden and he was bloody well going to act like one. He held out his arm and forced himself to watch as the Architect drew the knife’s tip down the inside of his forearm.

In Varric’s stories any of them could take a sword thrust without so much as a whimper. Anders watched the blade bite deep into his flesh and draw a line down his arm that welled scarlet instantly. He hissed, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you straight to the Void, you motherless _bastard!”_

The Architect paid no attention to his imprecations. It held the bowl under Anders arm and let the blood flow into it. The cut was deep, and this was no slow trickle, but the kind of wound that Anders would have treated immediately under other circumstances. It would have been funny how his hand went numb almost immediately while the cut still screamed with pain, only there was nothing funny about any of this.

“I’m healing this when the bowl is full,” he told the Architect. “You don’t get more than that.”

The Architect inclined its head. “This will suffice. As you may know, I have taken no Gray Wardens in years. A willing addition to my supply is welcome.”

Fenris shifted beside him and Anders shook his head. “Later. I’ll tell you the ugly story later, Gray Warden secrets or not.”

When the bowl was nearly full, the Architect nodded to him. “You may close the wound now.”

It held the bowl in place to catch the last of the flow while Anders smoothed his left hand down over the gash, summoning a cool shimmer of healing magic to knit the flesh closed, restoring feeling to his hand.

It carried the bowl carefully away, returning with a fine-bristled calligraphy brush and a much smaller bowl of a powdered pigment to which it added a tiny vial of oil.

“Please move as far apart as the chain will allow,” it instructed.

Should monsters be so polite?

He held still despite the crawling horror of the Architect’s touch as it painted runes on his manacle and arm and watched carefully while it repeated the process with Fenris. He could see a muscle jumping in Fenris’ jaw, but he also remained silent and still.

When the Architect was satisfied it stepped back, leaving the area bounded by the four pedestals. It set the brush and bowl aside and moved to the floor switch.

“It has been my experience that humans and elves find this… uncomfortable,” the Architect said. “But it will be brief.”

Before Anders had time to wonder at its experience, the Architect threw the switch and the world exploded.

The thing about a pain that consumes the entire world is that it consumes time as well. Anders was lost, all landmarks to the world he knew seared away by agony.

And then it ended. A minute, an hour, an eternity later, he couldn’t say. He lay half on the stone bier, sweat-soaked in the cold and gasping for each burning breath. Fenris had fallen to the floor while the Architect’s magic had circumscribed their world.

He pushed himself over to where Fenris lay, panting as hard as he was, eyes turned up to the distant ceiling while he tried to pull himself back from where the pain had sent him.

“Fenris?” His voice rasped in his throat, hoarse after screams.

“Here,” Fenris replied just as hoarsely. Before Anders could offer any help – not that he was in any condition to offer it – Fenris pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Did it work?”

For a moment, Anders could not remember what Fenris meant, but the memory returned to him when he saw the chain still dangling between them.

“No…” he said, almost a moan of disappointment.

“Wait.” The voice jolted him, reminding him that they were not alone. The Architect was there, standing over them, a mallet and chisel in its hands. “It is not done.”

Fenris levered himself to his feet before Anders or the Architect could make any offer of help. He swayed there before pushing himself up onto the bier to sit again.

“Do it,” he told the Architect, holding himself with more strength and poise than Anders could manage. Anders noted with a distant corner of his attention that the runes the Architect had painted on their arms had disappeared, maybe burned away by the magic that had been unleashed on them.

The Architect set the chisel to the center link of the chain and struck it with the mallet.

The chain broke.

The chain broke, and then the links crumbled to dust, one after another, chasing up the line of links toward Anders and Fenris until the last link crumbled away.

Anders felt a stupid grin stretch across his face. “Yes!”

Even Fenris smiled faintly, but…

“What about the cuffs?” Anders asked. “Can you get them off?”

The Architect nodded. “Yes.” It brushed the dust from the chain off the bier and stepped out of the boundaries of the pedestals, gliding back to the switch on the floor.

“Wait,” Anders said, feeling Fenris tense beside him. “Don’t you need to paint more runes or something?”

“I will,” the Architect said before it pulled the switch in the opposite direction, lighting the world with a violet blaze that froze them in place without the agony of the earlier magic.

It left the switch, and it left them, taking its staff from its back before it moved toward the door back to the library.


	25. Chapter 25

As soon as the Architect pulled the switch the other direction, Fenris knew they were betrayed. It had been inevitable. Fenris had not known what the particulars of it would be, but the betrayal itself was as inevitable as nightfall. Bad enough to beg help of a darkspawn, but a _mage_ at that?

The violet energies pulsed around them, muting sound, but through it he still heard shouts and the ring of clashing steel. Fenris knew that Dal and his companions were faced with the Architect and Utha, and who knew what the Messenger might have been doing while all were occupied? He could not sense darkspawn as the wardens could; for all he knew there might be a hundred spilling in the library door right that moment.

Fury welled inside him at his circumstance. Had anyone asked him two weeks ago if he would pay any price to be free of Anders, he would have said yes without hesitation. Now he knew he had been a fool.

He could not move, but he did not have to move to activate the lyrium that traced its way across his body. The metal pulsed sluggishly in reaction to his will, the markings lit along his skin, and he could feel the influence of the spires’ energy pushing against the lyrium’s power. He strained against the Architect’s construct, making the lyrium flare briefly before subsiding to a faint blue.

He had will, but not enough strength to free his body.

His mind raced for an alternative before settling on one desperate act.

Instead of trying to free his entire body, he focused all of his considerable will on his right arm. The markings flared to life along his arm, pushing back the violet energies with brilliant blue incandescence. His hand clenched and unclenched when he felt control return.

Before the power could be pushed back by the spires’ influence again, he drew his arm back and shoved Anders fast and hard, with all his considerable strength behind the open-handed push. The shove propelled him off the bier in the opposite direction from Anders to land with a bone-jarring thump on the stone floor. The lyrium glow extinguished when he lost his focus in the fall, leaving him lying motionless on his side unable to move even his eyes to see if his desperate gambit had worked.

Bare feet stumbled past his line of sight moments before the violet light winked out. Its absence plunged the room into virtual darkness while Fenris’ eyes adjusted to the insufficient glow from the amulet the Architect had left sitting on one of his workbenches and what light leaked in through the open doorway. He pushed himself to his feet and searched the darkness for Anders.

The room lit with the glow from Anders’ staff. The mage was leaning heavily on it, panting as though he had just run several miles.

“Andraste’s ass,” he muttered, throwing Fenris’ leggings at him before kicking his smalls aside with a disgusted, “I don’t know why I even bothered. Ended up naked anyway and not a tentacle in sight and the elf glows and what happens even with the chain gone? Just like my first go with Livia at the Circle. Maker’s balls life isn’t fair.”

He carried on a running, angry monologue that did nothing to slow him down while he shoved his feet into his boots, jerked his robe over his head, and buckled on his belts.

Fenris heard his commentary with half an ear while he pulled on his leggings and snatched up the rest of his armor. He wanted to throw himself out into the fighting he could hear going on in the library, but he would be a liability running out into battle naked carrying nothing but Aveline’s longsword.

Dressed, albeit sloppily, with hanging laces and half-closed buckles, Fenris slung his pack onto his back and ran for the door.

Any thoughts he might have had of surprising the Architect were blown away by an explosion that erupted at his back. Anders’ hand at his back propelled him forward when he would have turned to investigate.

“Go. That was just to be sure he doesn’t get to keep my blood.”

Fenris took him at his word and ran through the door into the library.

The room was chaotic with activity, a quick glance showing him the Architect with its long, skinny arms upraised in the midst of some spell, Utha sending Oghren reeling backward with a pommel strike that broke open the skin of his forehead, Nathaniel with his bow on his back and twin swords in his hands in the face of a wraith’s open-mawed lunge, Walter had his teeth sunk into the wraith’s arm, Brutal was harrying Utha, while Dal chanted the words to a spell familiar from Anders’ fondness for it.

Zevran was nowhere to be seen.

Fenris hefted his sword, pleased to hold it without a mage hindering his swing, and sprang at the Architect, sword poised to pin the creature to the ground.

It completed its spell and swung a hand around to hit Fenris full in the chest with a beam of that sick anti-light that it had used to cow the darkspawn. The light clung to his chest, crawling out to cover more of his armor, creeping toward his exposed skin. His flesh crawled, the lyrium embedded in it lighting with his instinctive need to preserve himself against the spell’s touch.

Everywhere the blackness touched the radiance from the lyrium it hissed audibly, burning away from the light until it was gone.

Zevran appeared behind the Architect as though the shadows had unfolded to bring him into existence. He slipped the blade of his dagger into the Architect’s back where its kidney would be if its internal anatomy bore any resemblance to the humanoid standard. He brought his sword around to score the Architect’s ribs, ducking when the darkspawn flung out another bolt of that frightening black light.

Anders’ and Nathaniel’s voices rang out almost in unison. “Darkspawn coming!”

Nathaniel kicked the wraith back and buried a blade to the hilt in the wraith’s chest. “Too many!”

Fenris caught a flash of Anders running past him toward the far door into the library, saw him freeze Utha in place almost as an afterthought and dart out the door.

If he saw the coward again, he was going to rip his lungs out, then his heart. And his tongue, he would not forget his endlessly yammering tongue.

He ignored the flash of magic from the corner of his eye that he could only hope came from Dal, swinging his sword to draw a wicked slash across the Architect’s midsection. If only he had a proper sword instead of Aveline’s toothpick, he might have cut the creature in half. The Architect loosed a wordless cry of pain as black ichor flooded down its body.

Dal’s shout cut through the noise with such clarity it could only have been magically augmented. “Fall back!”

Zevran responded instantly, grabbing Fenris’ arm despite the flare of anger and lyrium energy from the other elf.

“Go!” he exhorted Fenris, pulling with surprising strength. _“Go!”_

Fenris jerked back against the pull, already raising his empty hand to plunge it into the Architect when Zevran did something that made every nerve in his arm sing with pain before going completely dead.

“Go, my friend,” Zevran hissed, pushing him again, “Or stay here to die alone, which would be a tragedy to elfkind. The world cannot afford to lose such devastatingly handsome men as ourselves.”

Fenris stumbled with the push and swore that he would get Zevran back for this, then he joined the others in running for the door.

Anders stood outside the door, his skin fissured and lambent with Fade light. He faced down the tunnel the Messenger had disappeared down, his whole body swaying with the effort of his spellcasting. The last words rang out, making Fenris cast his eyes upward as he felt the magic descending.

For all his distrust of mages, watching Anders call flaming boulders to rain down in a tunnel far under the earth as though he had just opened a window into a volcano was worthy of a moment’s frisson of horror-tinged wonder.

The light from Anders’ spell illuminated the approaching horde of darkspawn.

Behind him Oghren slammed the library door closed and pushed his shoulder against it while Dal directed a fan of blue-white flames at the stone above the door.

Oghren darted back to avoid the flow of molten rock before Dal chanted another spell, shifting the fire to a blast of ice.

Nathaniel and Zevran had traded swords and dagger for bows once more to pick off darkspawn illuminated through the raining fire.

The molten rock solidified in a solid sheet over the door.

“Fall back!” Dal called again, moving to join Anders. “Wait for us at the next intersection.”

Zevran snatched at Fenris’ arm again, which was starting to come back to tingling life. “Come. Trust them to slow our pursuers, and remember what I said about staying close to the walls.”

Walter and Brutal stayed with the mages while Fenris and the others ran back up the tunnels the way they had come. The only light they had in their flight came from the crackling energies that danced along a long dagger that Nathaniel held high. Behind them he could hear voices raised in new incantations and more than one explosion.

 _“I’ll show you why mages are feared!”_ followed him up the tunnel, but for the life of him, Fenris was unsure whether it had been Anders’ voice or Widald Amell’s.

“What are they doing?” Fenris asked, hard on Zevran’s heels.

“I don’t know about your Anders,” Zevran called back, pounding down the tunnel like a competitive sprinter. “But Dal is killing many, many darkspawn.”

They reached the t-intersection and stopped, turning to face back the way they had come. Fenris strained to hear something other than the Oghren’s harsh panting. Apparently his exercise regimen did not include much running. Sloppy.

As Oghren’s panting slowed, Fenris could hear a distant rumble of explosions, and could not help a small smile. Anders did love those big showy explosions, and he had been forced to hold back on them when they had been chained together. Hearing them was a reassurance that at least one of the mages was still alive.

Then they stopped.

Zevran held his bow by his side, an arrow already nocked. Nathaniel paced, watching their backs most of the time. He had the dagger thrust through his belt to still cast a faint light but leave his hands free for his bow. Oghren shifted his axe to one hand and pulled out a water skin, taking a long pull from it without offering any to the others.

After he belched, the wafting odor forced Fenris to revise his thought that there had been water in the skin.

The wait stretched out until Fenris was ready to backtrack to find the mages. Even Zevran was growing restive, his façade of calm amusement stretching until it was thin. Fenris found himself rubbing the cuff on his wrist, turning it, stretching his arm out and back, reassuring himself that he was indeed unfettered once again.

“We should go back,” Oghren growled. “It’s too quiet.”

“Never say something like that,” Fenris retorted, thinking of Varric.

Nathaniel gave a humorless chuckle. “It always gets loud when you say that.”

“We stick to the plan,” Zevran said, but it had the ring of a man trying to convince himself as much as the others. “He has never let us down.”

Such loyalty, Fenris thought to himself. It must run in the Amell bloodline to inspire ordinarily sane people to mad acts.

They all came alert at the sound of running footsteps, Zevran and Nathaniel raising their bows while Fenris and Oghren readied themselves.

The mabari raced up the tunnel ahead of the two men, keeping to the walls as though they had understood the warning about Zevran’s “surprises.”

Dal and Anders followed behind them more slowly, moving like men who were pushing themselves with the last of their reserves. In the light from their staves, Fenris could see they were splattered with darkspawn ichor and splashes of blood.

Strangely, both men were grinning crazily.

“Let’s go,” Dal said as soon as he saw the group waiting for him. “We slowed them down, but you know how darkspawn are.”

Zevran’s tension had disappeared as soon as he saw Dal. He laughed and swept out a courtly bow for Dal to indicate which way to go. “They hold grudges worse than an Antivan whore?” he suggested.

“You would know,” Dal said, brushing a kiss to Zevran’s cheek on his way past. “Did you get it?”

Zevran shifted his bow and pulled a vial from his belt, tossing it to Dal to catch and examine in the light from his staff. “Well done.”

Anders leaned heavily on his staff, but it was just Anders for the moment, without Justice’s glow. He nodded to Fenris and did not stop when he caught up to the group.

“What is that?” Fenris asked.

“The Architect’s blood,” Dal said when none of the others answered. “Do you honestly think I came all this way just to do a favor for a friend who ran away years ago? He’ll be the first darkspawn with his very own phylactery.”

Fenris nearly stumbled before he caught himself.

 _Mages._

“Would you have left us there if we had not gotten out on our own?”

Dal glanced back. “Probably not, but this is bigger than your humorous inconvenience. The Architect is dangerous, but he keeps the darkspawn contained. At least for now. We’re better with the demon we know than the next unknown quantity to crawl out of a broodmother.”

Anders shot Dal a glare, all trace of a grin lost. “Always the way. You’ve been a warden too long, Dal. You never used to keep so many secrets. You never used to just _use_ people.”

Dal shook his head. “Yes I did.”

Whatever retort Anders might have had died on his lips before he forced himself into a jog. “They’re coming.”

Snarls echoed up the tunnels, pushing them on.

The light from Anders’ staff faltered and went out moments before the mage stumbled and caught himself on hands and knees on the tunnel floor. Fenris dragged him to his feet and pulled him onward with an arm around his waist.

A chorus of feral shouts went up, cutting off abruptly. Zevran chuckled even as he ran. “I hope they appreciate the fine Antivan craftsmanship.”

“Did you kill the Messenger?” Nathaniel asked when they had to slow to a fast walk for the sake of Oghren’s shorter legs. “Tell me you killed it,” he added hopefully.

“I didn’t,” Anders said. He had shaken off Fenris’ help as soon as they stopped running.

“Neither did I,” said Dal, taking a swig of water and passing the skin to Zevran. He nodded decisively. “It’s not unexpected. We’ll have to find another route out to keep them from knowing exactly which way we’re going. When we get to the square where we waited before, we’ll use that as a landmark before we branch off. There were enough tracks that it won’t be easy to follow us when we turn off.”

His smile didn’t cover his fatigue. “It won’t be the first time we’ve had to find our way out of the Deep Roads without a map, will it?”

Even Fenris could nod with that. He and Anders had been on Hawke’s ill-fated Deep Roads expedition.

Dal was beginning to remind Fenris of a less-truculent Bartrand.

• • •

Unlike Bartrand, Dal did not abandon any of his companions to fend for themselves. The journey out of the Deep Roads was harrowing in its own way – blight-ridden spiders, clans of deep stalkers, and the occasional wild bronto – but working together, they avoided the vast majority of the darkspawn in the tunnels.

When they finally, after four days spent avoiding darkspawn patrols and backtracking from dead ends, found their way out to the surface, they emerged into the first early snow flurries of the season. Fenris had never been so happy to feel a cold wind cut him to the bone as that first moment under a white-grey sky. Even that filtered light was so bright he spent the first few minutes blinking and shading his eyes with a hand.

Anders emerged from the crevice, his face streaked with dirt, his normally golden hair dingy brown, and turned his face up to the sky with simple wonder spreading over his features. He stood there, eyes closed, basking in the weak sunlight, and Fenris watched him simply to mark the novelty of his expression.

That expression fled when he opened his eyes and squinted at Dal while the others dug in their packs for cold weather clothes.

“When we get back, then what?” Anders asked, sounding like a man ready for a prison sentence to be passed.

“Do you mean will I be locking you up or sending you to Weisshaupt for punishment?” Dal asked.

Nathaniel straightened from digging in his pack to watch the exchange. Zevran handed Dal a folded cloak from his backpack before standing up to sling one of his own over his shoulders.

“I told Fenris that you wouldn’t punish him for what I did,” Anders said. “And now that we’re free.” He shrugged. “What are you going to do?”

Dal slung his cloak over his shoulders and looked away to fasten his clasp. “Nothing,” he said casually. “You’ve served your sentence already. One last mission for the Gray at Vigil’s Keep and then I’m sending you on long-term reconnaissance to the Free Marches. All very hush hush you know. I don’t think Weisshaupt needs to know a thing.” He looked at Nathaniel and Oghren. “Do you?”

Oghren snorted. “What do I care about what Weisshaupt wants? I follow you, same as always.”

Nathaniel didn’t look away from Anders as he answered. “We all have our chances for redemption. I had mine. I suppose it’s just that they have theirs.”

Dal nodded and turned toward the east and Vigil’s Keep. “Then let’s go home.” 


	26. Epilogue

A bitter wind whipped through Vigil’s Keep’s battlements making Anders’ ears burn until he pulled his cloak’s hood more tightly around his face. The wind was sharp enough that the torches that usually lit the battlements had all been extinguished, leaving Anders’ staff casting the only light save what little reached so high from a bonfire that burned in the courtyard.

He should be inside the keep in the tiny room that Dal had given him now that he no longer rated a guest room with Fenris chained at his side. He could be inside, he could be warm, and he could be asleep with Ser Pounce-a-lot curled up in a warm ball against his chest.

He could be, but when he told Varric any of this story later, how could he tell the dwarf that he got a mighty brood on while comfortable, warm, and cuddling his kitty? No, the biting cold suited much better.

“I had heard that Fereldan winters were cold,” a deep voice said behind him, “but is this typical?”

The light at the tip of his staff flared more brightly to betray his surprise before he got it under control, but he recognized the voice. Who wouldn’t recognize that dark, touchable voice?

He turned away from contemplating the dark countryside outside the Vigil and faced Fenris.

Fenris had the cloak from Herren clutched tightly around himself, its hood pulled so far forward as to leave his face shadowed. Anders chanced a look down to see that yes, even now the elf was barefoot.

“This isn’t winter,” he said with forced cheer. “This is just late fall, and if you want a real winter, you have to go to the Anderfels. You can’t beat a good Anders winter for freezing off your favorite bits. You ever wonder why the accent’s so thick there? Too many tongues frozen off. You don’t want to go licking a lamppost there, take my word for it.”

He was babbling worse than Merrill.

“Anders.”

Anders stopped babbling and waited for Fenris to speak.

“Your name is _not_ Anders?”

That was not what he had been expecting. No, what he had been expecting had been more along the lines of _If you ever tell anyone about what happened between us on the ship, I will tear your heart out._

“No,” he said slowly. “But it might as well be. No one has called me anything else in so long I’m probably the only one who remembers what it used to be.”

Fenris gave him an unreadable look from under his hood. “What is your name?”

Anders shivered when another hard gust of wind cut through his cloak. Fenris edged closer to the stone wall to block more of the wind.

“So, about the cuffs….” he said instead of answering the question.

Fenris shook his wrist free of the cloak to expose the cuff, letting it gleam in the light from Anders’ staff. “What of it?”

“I…” Maker this was awkward. “Need you not to touch me when you’re all…” He gestured to indicate Fenris from head to toe. “Glowing.”

He pulled his hood tighter. Against the wind. Yes. Not to hide his expression.

“When I am glowing,” Fenris said slowly, and if the corner of that bastard’s mouth was twitching up in a smile, Anders was going let Justice have a go at him, see if that awkward glowing thing still went both ways.

“That is what you meant when we escaped,” Fenris went on. “About a ‘first go with Livia’?”

“That never happened,” Anders said firmly. “I’m just saying. Don’t touch me then.”

Fenris nodded. “Not touching you has rarely been a problem in the past.”

That should not have stung.

“What are you doing up here? You could be back inside where it’s warm.”

Fenris shrugged one shoulder. “I could not sleep. Why are you up here? You could be inside with your cat.”

Anders reflexively smiled at the thought of Ser Pounce-a-lot, then he shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”

If he admitted it to himself, he had gotten used to having a warm body against his back, to knowing that there was someone there to wake him when the nightmares got too bad, to the… trust… that if things went pear-shaped, that he would not be in it alone.

He searched Fenris’ neutral features and let Justice whisper his promise that no one else would always be there for him the way Justice would. Especially not a mage-hating elf who only “did not hate” him.

“You’re right,” he said at last when he could glean nothing from Fenris’ expression. “I should go back inside, but so should you. Your lips are turning blue.”

“You’re right,” Fenris conceded, his tone almost a perfect match to Anders. “Is there someone I could speak to about a different room?”

“It’s late for that. Maybe tomorrow.” Anders shifted his staff, ostensibly because he was getting ready to leave, but more to get a clearer look at Fenris’ face. “Why do you want a different room?”

Fenris’ turned his eyes up to him from under the hood and Anders felt his heart stutter as though fingers had closed around it. The corner of his mouth twitched before he turned to stride away, his answer floating back tattered by the wind. “The bed is too big.”

Anders watched him go until his dark cloaked form was nearly swallowed by the night before he called, “Fenris.”

Fenris turned back, his expression lost in shadow.

“Theuderic. My name is Theuderic.” 


End file.
